


Brighter than Before

by samariumwriting



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canonical Character Death, Complicated Relationships, Established Relationship, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Minor Sylvain Jose Gautier/Yuris Leclair | Yuri Leclerc, Rebuilding Relationship, Slow Burn, Trans Felix Hugo Fraldarius, exes to friends to lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:21:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 53,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26931292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samariumwriting/pseuds/samariumwriting
Summary: When Felix realises at the age of twenty five that he is, in fact, not a woman, everything he ever knew falls out from underneath him. He quits his job, divorces the man he's been in love with for as long as he can remember, and moves far away from Faerghus, intent on never returning.Years later, he returns to Fhirdiad to visit his father. After all this time, Dimitri is still around. When Felix stays in the city longer than expected, he discovers that maybe, just maybe, the love he held for Dimitri hasn't faded.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Rodrigue Achille Fraldarius
Comments: 109
Kudos: 107
Collections: Dimilix Big Bang





	1. Making Distance

**Author's Note:**

> Aaaaaaah it's finally here! This is my fic for the Dimilix Big Bang, an emotional journey I enjoyed immensely and I hope you will too.
> 
> This fic features wonderful [art](https://twitter.com/honeyidareyou/status/1314954238452281349?s=20) by [@honeyidareyou](https://twitter.com/honeyidareyou?s=20), someone who's been incredibly supportive as a partner and friend from start to finish! I absolutely loved working with them and look out for their art later on in the fic
> 
> This fic was beta read by [berry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/blackberrychai/pseuds/blackberrychai), so thank you to them as well!
> 
> Some content warnings for this chapter: references to divorce, canonical past character death, poor coping mechanisms, referenced gender dysphoria, an instance of misgendering, sensory overload, mentioned alcohol, and surgery. Please do what's best for you <3

“I...think this is the last one,” Dimitri said, ducking down to help Felix lift the final box into the back of the car. As soon as his hands were out of the way, Felix slammed the door shut. Dimitri jumped.

“Well, that’s it then,” he said. He wavered on thanking Dimitri for his help. Decided there wasn’t any point. “I’m going now.”

“That’s it then,” Dimitri echoed. He had that same tone to his voice as always. Hurt. Concerned. Felix didn’t want to think about it; he had to focus on the journey ahead. “Safe travels, Felix. Good luck. I hope...I hope everything goes well for you. From here.”

“I’ll be fine,” Felix said, shifting awkwardly under the weight of his words. Dimitri smiled that slightly pathetic, hopeful smile as Felix made his way to the driver’s seat. He carefully pushed away a handful of leaves from the plant that was drooping onto the handbrake.

Felix started the car. As he pulled out of the drive of the house he’d just lived in for the last three years, he tried not to look into the wing mirror. He didn’t need to. But he did it anyway, and he caught sight of Dimitri waving to him. The look on his face was hopelessly sad, and Felix felt a hot curl of something akin to grief rise in his chest.

He pushed the feeling away. This was fine. He didn’t need to feel like this. He was making a clean break from everything here, and Dimitri wasn’t his husband anymore; he didn’t need to feel sad. Even if he was leaving the best thing he’d ever had behind, he couldn’t let himself feel that.

Felix tried not to stew in his thoughts as he passed the familiar scenery of Fhirdiad’s suburbs. He really hadn’t moved much in his whole life; through the car window, he caught sight of the school where he got into his first fight, the park he used to play in, the store window he always pressed his nose up against, still selling the same outrageously priced toys. He never wanted to see any of this again. That was the aim, anyway.

He drove along Faerghus’ highways for hours. He stopped for lunch just by the border to Adrestia. It was...well, the river wasn’t anything special. It was a big river, and there were some mountains that would probably look pretty if the persistent drizzle hadn’t rendered most of it completely invisible.

The border check was dull, and Felix’s thoughts strayed again. Adrestia. There was no point looking back into his wing mirror at the country he’d never left before when he had a new life to look forward to. Come the end of the summer, he’d be starting a new degree at Enbarr University. He’d no longer have to think about someone else’s finances or investments or anything like that. Just medieval history and wherever that could take him.

Enbarr looked completely different to Fhirdiad. Where Fhirdiad was all grey stone and, when you got out of the centre, concrete and squat houses, Enbarr was different. Felix drove past tall blocks of flats painted in bright colours, canals that cut straight through the city, and buildings constructed of white stone. Many of the hallmarks were the same, but it felt undeniably different.

The first problem he came up against was how on earth to locate the house he’d arranged to move into. He knew what it looked like from the photos, and in theory he knew where it was, but finding it was another matter. He drove down several side streets, up roads that looked far too fancy for the rent he was paying, and finally into a slightly run down but significantly more spacious area tucked away in the old town’s religious quarter.

The house was bigger than he’d expected. Sure, there were eight of them living there, and each of them had a separate bedroom, but he’d expected it to be a bit more like the student digs he’d suffered through in Fhirdiad. All ‘this is two bedrooms’ when it was actually a living room with a curtain down the middle.

Felix dismissed the thought of him and Dimitri aged nineteen pushing the curtain aside and sharing a bedroom and focused on the present. The house was big, set back from the road, and built of light brown bricks. At the front, there was a woman Felix vaguely recognised; Mercedes Martritz.

Felix hadn’t met anyone he was moving in with; the perils of moving to a new university in a new city in a new country, he supposed, but beggars couldn’t be choosers and he hadn’t been able to justify the price of living alone. Mercedes was one of the people who reached out to him when he expressed on the university housing page that he was looking for somewhere to live.

“Hello!” she called when Felix got out of the car. He stretched, trying to push down the nervousness that filled his chest. He wasn’t nervous. He had no reason to be nervous. “I’m Mercedes,” she said, like he didn’t know that. “Hang on, I didn’t know you were bringing so much stuff, I’ll call a couple people down to help you with that.”

With that, she turned towards the house and called two more names he recognised: Dorothea and Leonie. Felix didn’t know quite what to say, so he stood there without even voicing a greeting. He felt like his mouth wouldn’t work even if he tried.

Leonie and Dorothea appeared soon after. “Afternoon, Felix,” Leonie said with a smile. Felix nodded to her. “Need a hand with all of that stuff?”

“No,” he said, making his way to the boot.

“That’s fine,” Dorothea said, breezing past him but stopping short of touching any of his things. “We can help anyway. Many hands make light work, you know?”

Felix looked between the three women in front of him. All of them were at least an inch taller than him, and Leonie was considerably more muscular. “Fine,” he said, gesturing towards the boxes. “That one is fragile.” He nodded towards a box that had a label reading ‘fragile’ on it, written in Dimitri’s handwriting. Felix made a mental note to get rid of the box as soon as possible.

Fairly quickly, the three of them helped Felix lift his many boxes and bags and plants through the hallway and up two flights of stairs to the bedroom he’d picked out. He wouldn’t have picked the bedroom if he’d realised just how hard carrying boxes up the stairs would be, but he’d made his mistake and he’d have to stick with it now.

“Thanks,” he remembered to say once all the boxes were arranged in a heap resembling order on his floor. The plants had taken up a place on his windowsill.

“No problem!” Mercedes said, her face splitting into a bright smile. “It’s good to meet you properly, Felix. I hope you like it here.”

Felix glanced around the room and nodded. There was nothing special about it, but there was also nothing familiar. The bed was single, the wardrobe was green instead of blue, the desk had a chair that was a different shape. It was fine. He could live here.

Leonie and Mercedes soon filed out, but Dorothea hesitated at the door. “My room is opposite yours,” she commented. “You’ll be sharing a bathroom with me as well, that’s the door opposite the stairs. Lysithea and Ashe will be up here too, but they haven’t arrived yet. Does that all sound okay?”

Felix nodded. Dorothea hesitated again, hanging around in the doorway for a moment. He waited for her to say something. Maybe she was waiting for something from him, but when he didn’t have anything to say she left, closing the door behind her.

Felix let out a heavy sigh and collapsed onto the unmade bed. Goddess, his back hurt. He pulled his phone from his pocket and grimaced at the numerous notifications in front of him.

‘Ur prob on the road by now, sorry.’ The first was from Sylvain, followed by one more. ‘I hope you make it safe. Good luck dude.’

Felix blinked at it. Checked the message from Ingrid. ‘Hi Felix! I hope you’re doing well. I think you’re meant to be heading out of Fhirdiad today, so good luck with everything.’

Then, there were two from his father. ‘Hello Felix,’ the first read. ‘I hope the journey goes smoothly. Please text me when you arrive - you know how a father worries for his son :)’

And then there was Dimitri. Felix squeezed his eyes shut when he saw the twenty text notifications. He felt sick. He opened his eyes and deleted the notifications. Then, he deleted the whole text history. Then he went into his contacts and blocked Dimitri, Ingrid, and Sylvain’s numbers. He didn’t feel much better.

‘Things are fine,’ he texted back to his father. His hands were shaking. ‘I arrived, and all my things are in my room.’

Moments later, his father responded. ‘How are you feeling?’ A veiled question. A loaded question. They both knew how he’d been in the past few months.

‘Fine,’ he replied. He did not feel fine. There was a pressure building behind his eyes, one he refused to give into, and his teeth hurt from how long he’d spent with them clenched together. His head hurt. His mind span. He felt like everyone was staring at him, even though no one else was in the room.

Felix opened the profile he’d had on ConnectMe since he was thirteen. Anyone could look at that, look at him. Contact him whenever they wanted. He went into the settings and deleted the account. Then he deleted the app. His fingers were still shaking. His whole body was shaking. He felt wrong. He could barely breathe.

He felt better when that app was gone, as well as the three other small accounts he had on various platforms. None of it remained. He stopped short only of deleting the email they were all attached to, instead resolving to block anyone from Faerghus who might happen to email him when they realised everything was gone.

It was better when everything was quiet. Felix, still shaking and feeling slightly numb, got up to get a glass of water. There was a headache building behind his eyes and he was pretty sure he needed to get some sleep.

* * *

Settling into a routine in the house was fairly easy. Felix learned that Leonie went on a jog between seven and eight in the morning, so he got up at quarter past seven on the dot. Mercedes tended to get up at quarter to eight, which gave him half an hour to eat breakfast and avoid seeing her.

Once he’d eaten something, he read. There was a huge pile of books he picked up from the local library on his first morning, and he was determined to get through as many as he could before term started. He hadn’t studied in a long time and he needed to be prepared.

It was easy to get lost in the text. There was something about the past that just sucked Felix in, and he was happy to immerse himself in words he sometimes barely understood. The only problem with that was...

“Felix?” Mercedes knocked on his door. Felix glanced up. It was half two, and he hadn’t eaten lunch. “You should probably eat something, it’s getting pretty late!”

Mercedes had started doing this since the third day, when she’d presumably noticed that Felix kept forgetting to eat. It was embarrassing, but he tended to follow her advice; he was usually pretty hungry by the time she knocked.

Once he’d done that, he read some more. He read into the early evening, when it was Dorothea’s turn to knock on his door. “Felix,” she called. “Do you want to come and cook with us? We’re making dinner, there’s space for one more!”

“I’m fine without,” he called back. And, without fail, Dorothea left him alone. From there, he read late into the night. He tended to wait until he’d heard Bernadetta get some of her food; he’d only seen her once, in the kitchen at a pretty late hour, and they’d both been mortified enough that Felix made an effort to avoid the times she ate.

Then he read until his eyes burned and his head ached. He collapsed into bed and told himself that he’d feel more purposeful in the morning. Maybe he’d even unpack all his things.

He didn’t. He didn’t feel better the next morning either, or the next, or the one after that. He never felt better. It never got easier. He just felt more exhausted, more hollowed out. Time was moving so quickly and so slowly at the same time.

One day, over three weeks after he’d moved in, was worse than the ones that came before. When Mercedes knocked on his door, something seized up inside him. He curled up on his bed and tried to process the feeling lashing out at him from inside his chest.

He didn’t think he could move. He was surprised he could even breathe. The thought of another person thinking about him, let alone seeing him, made him want to sink into the floor and never emerge. Everything hurt, but he couldn’t move. Couldn’t think beyond a cycle of ‘should be better than this, why can’t I be better than this’. He didn’t get up for lunch, or to read again. It occurred to him at some point that there was a deep, aching loneliness in his chest.

When Dorothea came by in the evening, Felix was starving. He hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in nearly twelve hours, but he wasn’t entirely sure he’d been conscious for all of those either. Something rotten and hard had settled in his throat, and he didn’t answer her.

“I know you’re in there, Felix,” she said. The fear in his chest jumped. “If you don’t want to talk with us, that’s okay, but you need to say. If you don’t say anything, I’m coming in.”

Felix bit his lip, hard, to try and regain some semblance of clarity to his thoughts, but he couldn’t manage it. There were tears forming in his eyes, and he still couldn’t say a word. He missed Dimitri.

Dorothea came in after a few minutes of waiting for him to reply. She turned the light on as she entered—Felix had barely even noticed it get dark—and sat at his desk. “Okay, Felix,” she said. “What’s the matter?”

Felix sucked in a shaky breath. His whole body was trembling, he was starving and upset and desperately lonely, but he still couldn’t say a word. He expected Dorothea to leave, but instead she just...got her phone out. Waited.

It took a while for Felix to even his breathing out enough to speak, and even then it felt wrong. “I think I made the wrong choice,” he said. His voice cracked, but he didn’t cry. Dorothea looked up at him, encouraging him to continue. “I...had a husband. He was wonderful and understanding and I didn’t deserve him. I couldn’t reciprocate or reach out and everything turned sour and-”

His breathing hitched slightly, but he brought it back under control. “My friends didn’t think much of everything that happened. I hated my job, I hated my coworkers. I hated everything about my life and I thought that if I got rid of all of it I’d feel  _ better, _ but I don’t.” Felix squeezed his hands tightly into fists, so much it hurt, but it didn’t make him feel any better. Nothing made him feel better.

“Felix,” Dorothea started. Her voice was so...calm. How could she just sit there and process that when Felix couldn’t do it himself? “You just got rid of everything in your life and replaced it with almost nothing.”   


“I have-” he objected, but Dorothea immediately went to cut him off.

“No,” she said. “You have a degree you’re now obsessively reading for, yes, but you don’t have anything else. You need...a hobby, and some friends, and you need to make positive additions to your life. You can’t just cut out all the negative things and expect yourself to be happy. Right?”

Felix thought about what she’d said for a moment. He supposed that, maybe… “Yeah,” he said. There was probably something else he could do to make himself feel better. He just felt so trapped in his head all the time. “Maybe I do.”

“Good,” Dorothea replied, a smile forming on her face. Just a small one, and it faded when Felix didn’t return it. Before his mind could go off spiralling over how she clearly disliked him, she spoke again. “Now come and make dinner with us.”

Felix clenched his teeth, winced, and then nodded. He supposed he could do that. “Sure,” he said, following her down the stairs with slightly shaky steps. He stayed a couple of paces behind, and when he reached the bottom of the stairs he hesitated again. He could hear Mercedes and Leonie alongside another voice in the kitchen, and it made him feel...awkward.

“I got Felix to join us!” Dorothea called, and a quiet cheer went up from the kitchen. In that moment, Felix almost turned around and fled, but instead he set his shoulders and walked inside.

At one kitchen counter, Leonie chopped meat, and Mercedes stood in front of the hob, stirring something he couldn’t see. In front of him, sitting at the kitchen island, was someone he didn’t recognise. Her hair was a bright shock of white, and she watched him with an inquisitive look as he entered. “Hello,” she greeted. “I’m Lysithea. I moved in earlier today, it’s good to finally meet you.”

“Hi,” he replied. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he gripped the edge of the countertop hard. “I’m Felix.” She knew that already, but she smiled in return anyway.

Mercedes looked up from the pot and smiled at him. “I hope you feel better soon, Felix,” she said. He hadn’t said anything, but he supposed he looked a bit like a wreck right now. Great first impression to set for Lysithea. “I’m really glad you decided to join us! What’s your cooking like?”

“Passable,” he said. He tried not to think about how Dimitri always ate his cooking without enthusiasm. He didn’t think it was bad, but… “I can cook.”

“I’d hope so,” Lysithea said. “You  _ look _ like an adult, at least.” Felix was perfectly aware that yes, since he’d cut his hair he did look like a sixteen year old boy with a horrendous baby face. But the sentiment Lysithea was going for was appreciated.

Felix joined in a little with the cooking, but kept quiet through the various lively conversations over the dinner table. He didn’t have much to say, and he still felt a little raw from the rest of the day. Not to mention the persistent shake in his hands, which didn’t quite go away until after his second helping of the casserole.

“How’re you doing now?” Dorothea asked as she joined him in taking his leave once all the food was done. He hadn’t wanted an escort back to his room or anything, and he hated to think that they all thought he needed it, but he didn’t want to kick up a fuss.

“Better,” he said. “Tonight wasn’t...awful.” Dorothea smiled brightly in return, apparently seeing straight through his attempt to play down how much getting out of his room had helped.

* * *

The next few days were a little easier. Felix hadn’t quite worked out how to put all of Dorothea’s advice to use, but he was happy to get out of his room and do a bit of his reading in the garden. Enbarr summers were much hotter and brighter than Fhirdiad’s, too, so he accepted the cooing and gentle teasing when he ended the first day with a bright sunburn.

It felt good to talk to people. It was like some kind of barrier had been broken once he was actually in the room with someone, and some of the fear went away. Leaving his room was still hard, especially when he knew other people would be around, but he was working on it, and felt all the better for it.

One lunchtime, he decided to grab food before Mercedes had to come and remind him. Because of that, she was still in the kitchen when he showed up, book under his arm. She glanced at it. “Do you have any hobbies, Felix?” He couldn’t decide if she sounded interested or concerned.

For a moment, Felix considered answering by saying that his hobby was reading. But he kept Dorothea’s words in mind; it was a lie, and lying wouldn’t help him feel better. “Dorothea said I should get some,” he admitted, and Mercedes let out a light laugh. “I don’t really know where to start. I haven’t had hobbies since I...dropped them all. Back when I was at university the first time round.”

The look on Mercedes’ face was very...she knew exactly what he was talking about, and Felix felt very seen. “Dorothea’s told me that before too,” she said. “I used to be in such a habit of running myself into the ground with everything I could get my hands on. If you’re unsure, I’d suggest sewing - I can lend you some supplies, and it’s very detail oriented. It’s good to be able to make something with your own hands sometimes, you know?”

Felix paused. He didn’t really like the thought of sewing. It was something he’d never managed to pick up, though plenty of people had told him he should. They used to ask what he did if his husband’s shirts ripped. Sewing was...well, it was something people said he’d never learned because there was no mother in his house growing up. He wasn’t going to pick it up now.

Mercedes, apparently, noticed his hesitation. “I’m sure you’ll like it!” she said. “There’s no harm in trying, at the very least. You should give yourself breaks from reading anyway.”

Felix tried not to grimace as he accepted. He wasn’t expecting to like it at all; it was for women, or at least that was how people saw it. So he wouldn’t enjoy it one bit.

It turned out that Felix enjoyed embroidery. He’d never, in the past, been all that great at working with his hands; his coordination wasn’t fantastic, and he tended to get shaky. But there was something about being able to stab a piece of cloth over and over with a sharp metal object and then make it into something that actually looked sort of nice (okay, it didn’t look that good, but he was trying) that was almost...fun.

He ordered some more materials and gave Mercedes her own back. She smiled brightly at him and he tried not to get annoyed that she was right. How did these people have him down so well when he barely knew them?

* * *

“Hi!” the voice called, the moment he entered the kitchen for lunch. Felix looked down and saw a young woman with very bright ginger hair and a huge smile on her face. If he was thinking of the right person from the group chat then this was… “I’m Annette,” she greeted, smiling brighter.

“Felix,” he replied, forcing a smile onto his face.

“It’s great to meet you,” she said, even though they’d spoken several times in the group chat about anime. “You’re, uh, shorter than I expected? You have tall vibes.”

“Does everyone have tall vibes to you?” Felix asked, making an effort to not noticeably straighten his posture out. He was not short. He was a whole five feet and five and a half inches tall and he was  _ not _ going to be told he was short by this tiny woman.

“A little,” Annette said with a laugh. “I don’t know, I just imagined you as...different.” She jumped up onto one of the stools at the kitchen island and swung her legs back and forth, which Felix tried to ignore as he grabbed his lunch.

“What were you expecting?” he asked.

“A beard,” she said, and Felix scoffed.

“Keep dreaming,” he said. “I’m still a long way down the waiting list for a T prescription. And even if I  _ can _ grow a beard, I won’t keep it. My father’s facial hair is ghastly.”

Annette laughed again and gosh, she really lit up the whole room when she did that. “I can empathise with that. My father doesn’t really shave and he thinks he’s so...manly. He actually just looks kinda gross.”

Felix nodded, sort of unsure what to say in response to something like that. He went back to getting his lunch together, sitting down opposite Annette when he was finally done. “I was also sort of expecting you to have a better fashion sense,” she said with a shrug.

Felix looked down at himself. “What’s wrong with this?” He’d picked most of it up online, getting the most inoffensive items of clothing he could find, sure, but he didn’t think it looked bad. It was just…

“Well, it’s sort of boring,” Annette said. “More boring than you come across as over text, anyway. You’re more chatty via text too.” Felix shrugged. “You should get some stuff that isn’t plain! It’ll help you set a good impression on all the freshers when term starts.”

In literally any other situation ever, Felix would refuse a suggestion like that. He hated shopping; hated it with a passion, even. He didn’t like changing rooms, or shops, or queues, or… Annette’s smile was really bright, though, and her expression was so hopeful, and he maybe hadn’t left the house to do more than help get the grocery order in or sit in the garden to read for a couple of weeks.

“Fine,” he said, and that was how he ended up in a shopping centre with Annette and Mercedes on a Tuesday afternoon.

He basically let himself be dragged around. He hadn’t been shopping in person for years (since he went to try on wedding dresses, his mind supplied, and he pushed the thought very firmly away again by focusing on the image of Annette mimicking a mannequin pose), and he honestly had no idea where to go or what to do.

Fortunately, Annette and Mercedes had picked up on the fact that he wasn’t the kind of person who cared about how well his clothes fit him. The little ‘men’s’ tag on the clothes meant a bit more to him, even if he couldn’t find anything that was actually small enough to not hang off him a little.

He entered each set of changing rooms with a heap of clothes, exited them with a slightly more rumpled heap of clothes, and tried not to think about the bit in the middle where he had to look at himself in the changing room mirrors. It was difficult to find things he actually liked the look of, especially when he had to look at them on his body, but Annette and Mercedes were...pretty good at finding things.

At the end of the day, he went back to the house, lagging slightly behind the pair of them, with a few new jackets, shirts, tees, and jeans. He also went back to the house with an absolutely killer headache and a renewed hatred for shopping, but he was pretty pleased with the result of the day. Annette and Mercedes seemed pleased too, and that felt...nice, he supposed.

When he got back up to his bedroom, he could load the closet full of clothes that actually felt like his, and when he threw himself on his bed, it felt just a little bit more like home.

* * *

“Hello?” he said. Nervousness jumped in his chest; he hadn’t called his father since he moved, but the start of term was fast approaching and he didn’t know how much energy he’d have to do something like a phone call once it did.

He’d texted his father fairly frequently, of course; even when he cut all his old friends off, he didn’t quite have the heart to deny his father the joy of sending him videos of a man making a knife out of smoke that he’d already seen. But calling was different. Calling was harder.

“Hello!” his father replied, and Felix could hear the smile on his face. “It’s good to hear from you, Felix. How are you doing?”

“Fine,” he said. “Just as I said in all my texts.” Even as he spoke, though, there was a small smile forming on his face. Sure, his father was annoying, but it was sort of refreshing to hear how much he still cared.

“You sound like you’re doing much better,” he replied, and Felix felt a little heat rise to his cheeks. He supposed he was doing a little better. “Have you made some friends?” It was like he was talking to a five year old.

“Yeah, I have some friends,” he answered, choosing to pick his battles on this. His father treating him like a child wasn’t usually Felix’s biggest problem with him. “I live with some people who are...tolerable.”

“I’m glad,” his father replied, and Felix could hear the smile in his voice. The thought that he audibly sounded better was...nice, he supposed. It was good to hear that it wasn’t just something he felt. “Seeing as you have new friends, maybe you could- forgive me for saying this, I don’t want to intrude, but you could text some of your friends back here too.”

Dimitri had put him up to this. Felix could tell. “No,” he replied. “I don’t need to talk to them. I don’t- I don’t want to be tied up with them and all their business anymore. They’re in the past.”

Felix was glad Rodrigue didn’t point out that  _ he  _ was sort of in the past too, but that didn’t mean he liked his reply. “They’re worried for you, Felix,” he said. There was a soft, sad note to his voice that he only ever got when he thought about Dimitri. Felix didn’t need to hear it. “But I understand why you feel that way, and I respect your decision.”

Felix knew his father didn’t understand. If he understood, he wouldn’t ask him to do things they both knew he’d never do. Instead of sounding like he got it, his father sounded a little more like he was reading off a worksheet on how to talk to difficult children. “Thanks,” he forced out. “We can talk another time. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” Rodrigue echoed. “It was good to speak to you, Felix. I-”

Felix hung up. He didn’t need to continue the conversation after he’d already clearly signalled he was done. That, and he didn’t think he’d be able to cope with the idea of responding to yet more difficult feelings. He flopped backwards onto the bed and let out a heavy sigh. He was exhausted. Why did feelings have to be so hard?

* * *

“Good afternoon!” the young man at the door greeted, gently pushing his way past Felix to bring a box into the house. “Sorry, the others came down a bit faster. I don’t think there’ll be anything left in the car when you go out there, but you can-” Felix went out onto the driveway and, sure enough, there was nothing left in the car.

He smiled slightly awkwardly at the young man and picked up one of the boxes from his arms. “Oh, thanks!” he said. “You’re Felix, right? I’m Ashe.” He nodded, slightly unsure as to what came next in this exchange. Ashe already knew who he was. He knew who Ashe was. “I, uhh...what are you studying?”

This was a familiar script from the first time he attended university. He’d never quite perfected it, and eventually the topic died away, but maybe he’d get it this time round. “History,” he said. “What are you studying?”

Ashe’s face lit up as if he hadn’t expected to be asked that in return. “I’m studying literature!” he said. “You’re from Faerghus as well, right? I love the Faerghus classics especially, though they don’t offer a specific course on it. I just adore the cultural values that are still so resonant today, the chivalry and-”

“It’s nothing to get excited about,” he snapped, setting the box down on the landing by Ashe’s room. Felix’s mind went straight to a different box with a few personal effects. A big military funeral with trumpets and men in uniform and anger no one could understand.

“O-oh,” Ashe said. His voice went quiet, and there was a flush to his cheeks. His gaze fell to the ground. Felix felt a flicker of concern, replaced almost immediately by the flames of annoyance. He turned on his heel and went back to his room, leaving Ashe to get on with his unpacking.

Felix wasn’t surprised when there was a knock on his door within half an hour. He wasn’t planning on opening it; he had no desire to talk about the sour encounter with anyone, let alone his housemates, who’d probably moralise about it to him or something. “Felix?”

The voice made him waver. It was Bernadetta’s voice. He’d only seen her a few times, even though they technically lived in the same space. He sort of...he liked her, he supposed, and even though he knew exactly what the line of the conversation would be, he didn’t have the heart to turn her away when she’d actually emerged from her room for once.

Bernadetta perched on the chair pulled up to his desk like she owned it. “I’ll listen to your excuses, mister,” she started, “but just know that no matter how justified you feel, or how sore that topic was for you or whatever, you’re being totally unreasonable. You upset Ashe and you only just  _ met _ him. You need to be nicer to people.”

“You don’t understand,” he grumbled. No one ever understood, even when it happened. There was no hope of anyone getting it now.

“Yeah!” Bernadetta replied. There was a resolution in her voice which he’d never heard from her before. “I don’t get it, you’re right. And neither does anyone else, especially not Ashe. So you better go and apologise for blowing up on him and not even explaining why you did it. Just be an adult about this, Felix.”

Felix sucked in half a breath. “Yeah,” he said. Yeah. She was probably right. He had been a dick about it. He felt a lot...well, not a lot, but he felt a little calmer about it now. “Yeah, I’ll do that.”

Finding Ashe in the living room on the ground floor, Felix felt like a piece of shit. He knew he was justified in thinking that Faerghus’ values were shit, because he’d  _ lost _ someone to that pile of crap, but...Ashe’s eyes were a little red. He’d been crying, and Felix felt like an absolute dick. “I’m sorry,” he said.

Ashe seemed almost...surprised to hear his words, and Felix didn’t know what that said about him but it didn’t make him feel good about himself. “Oh, don’t worry about it!” he said, while Felix worried about it. “We can- talk about it properly some other time if you like. I’d like to hear your perspective on it, because we clearly have different views.” He laughed a little as he spoke.

Goddess, he was so young. He had no idea what Felix was about when he’d snapped at him, clearly. “You don’t want to hear about it,” he assured him. He didn’t want to put Ashe off his studies. “But if you really want to hear about it, we could...talk about it some other time.”

Ashe smiled brightly at him in return, and Felix felt a little better. At least he hadn’t completely fucked this one up.

* * *

Term started, and it was...a struggle. People doing their degrees for the first time were so- they had so much energy. It also didn’t help that things just really didn’t go his way most of the time.

“I thought that source was fairly tricky,” he said, biting back the urge to get angry at the young woman who’d launched straight into a ‘simple point’ that would have taken him hours to reach. “There are lots of linguistic layers to something like that, and a nuance of audience - it’s written for her family members, but also prepared for publication.”

“That’s a good observation,” their seminar leader said. Felix tried not to smile too much. “What do you think?” she asked, indicating the man next to Felix.

“Uh,” the young man next to him said. He was about twice Felix’s size, and wearing a rugby shirt that stretched over his muscles. He nodded towards Felix. “What she said.”

A beat. Felix’s hands clenched. For just a moment, his chest hurt. “He,” he said, his voice tight. Too tight, probably.

“Oh crap dude, sorry,” came the immediate reply. “What he said. It was...tricky to unpick all the different aspects of meaning.” The conversation moved on after that, and Felix knew it wasn’t really a big deal, it’d inevitably happen like that, but it still felt-

He felt like he’d said the wrong thing, or said it in the wrong way. He could have let it slide; maybe should have let someone else correct him so he wouldn’t feel so bad. But if he’d done that, people might have felt too awkward to correct him, and then he would have left it too late and would have just had to sit there thinking about it. He was still sitting there, thinking about it.

It didn’t help him feel any more welcome at the university. He was a lot older than a lot of the other students, too, and it made him feel out of place. They spent a lot of time talking about their school days in the recent past, commiserating over the exams they all took. He’d show up in the lecture hall after going to bed at eleven in the evening, up bright and early to do some prep for the lecture, and they’d half stumble in, hungover.

There was a difference between him and them, and he didn’t know how to bridge that gap. Every situation seemed to hammer it home.

“Did you have to take that nightmarish paper on Leicester history too?” one young woman asked him.

Felix shook his head. “I didn’t take my exams last summer,” he answered.

“Oh, that’s really cool!” someone replied, and Felix raised an eyebrow. It really wasn’t that cool, so they probably had a different idea of what he meant. “What did you do on your gap year?”

Felix did his best not to snort. “I was an accountant for four years,” he said. “I didn’t take a gap year, this is just take two.”

“Oh. Right, cool.” And then the conversation moved on, no one quite sure what to say to his statement. It always happened, and it always made him feel...he was an adult, but he wasn’t doing all the adulthood things that people his age did. At least not anymore. But he also wasn’t an adult in the same way they all were, fresh-faced and still unsure of what the difference between a frying pan and a saucepan was.

It was easy to wallow in it for a while, but he tried to keep what his housemates told him in mind. He couldn’t isolate himself; he’d just feel miserable. That meant he had to make an effort to put himself out of his comfort zone, even if it made him feel awkward and it didn’t always work.

So, the class after his disastrous misgendering encounter (which still weighed on him a little, because Felix hadn’t spoken to the young man since and they’d never really  _ talked _ about it), Felix sat down in a different seat when he arrived. He was sure he’d get a dirty look from someone for it later, but he wanted to try talking to someone new.

“Good morning,” he said, addressing the girl to his right. She was younger than the rest of the students, or at least looked it; though Felix wasn’t the best judge of age.

“Hello!” she replied, her face lighting up immediately. “My name is Flayn. What’s yours?”

“I’m Felix,” he said, quirking his mouth in an approximation of a smile in return. From there, Flayn launched into a conversation about the reading they’d both done for the class.

“And, well, I wasn’t sure if it would be strange to bring it up, but I have considered it, ah-”

“What is it?” he asked.

“Well, it’s about the article on Saint Cethleann,” she said. “It referred to a little church in the old town religious quarter, and I happen to have been there a number of times. I just thought that the way the article referred to worship there was interesting, because of the size.”

“I think I’ve been,” Felix replied, and Flayn’s face somehow lit up even brighter. “What did the article talk about?”

“Well, it referred to the long communion bench,” she replied, “but the area for taking communion isn’t large, and any worship there would have involved queueing in front of the choir stands while they sang the communion hymn. That produces a significantly different effect in comparison to what’s described.”

“I think it’s worth mentioning,” Felix said. “It’s interesting, and you’re right.”

“You think so?” Flayn asked, her smile dimpling her cheeks. Felix nodded. “Thank you for saying so! I thought it seemed a little silly to note, but I- I appreciate you treating me like an adult on this.”

Felix shrugged. “There’s no reason not to,” he said. “Do people often dismiss your meticulously researched points because of some other assumption?”

“Well, people sometimes just say I’m cute when I say things like that,” Flayn said, and sure, the pout on her face was probably best described as cute, but that had nothing to do with her words. “It makes me feel a little embarrassed to bring things up.”

“You shouldn’t,” Felix said firmly. “You’re passionate about it, so it matters.” Flayn’s smile once again replaced her pout, and this time Felix felt a little more confident returning it. He felt like he’d made a friend.

* * *

“Oh, Felix, there you are!” Dorothea called as he descended the stairs. Felix chose not to point out that he’d arrived home before she had, and he’d been up in his room the whole time, only nodding to tell her to continue. “Do you want to come clubbing with us later?”

“I can’t drink,” he said. His housemates’ friendly advice had turned into ‘Felix, you’re probably a bit depressed’ so he was trying to sort that, and said solution didn’t mix well with alcohol (or grapefruit juice. It wasn’t a huge loss).

“You don’t need to drink to have fun while clubbing!” she said with a grin. “Sure, we have to go to a half decent club, but I don’t make a habit of frequenting the shoddy ones. It’ll be fine, you’ll have a great time.”

Felix had never really been clubbing before. Dimitri didn’t like loud spaces for a lot of his life, after the kinds of things that had happened to him, so Felix always stayed home with him and avoided them as a form of solidarity. Maybe now was the time to change that. “Sure,” he agreed. “I’ll try it out.”

Twenty minutes into the club, Felix regretted his decision. The lights were flashing all around him in a way he was sure must be against some kind of regulation, and it made his head spin. Everyone was far too close, and far too loud, and he’d been touched - accidentally or not - far too many times for him to be anywhere near comfortable.

That was nothing compared to the music. The music was so loud that Felix felt like his whole body was vibrating, and he was pretty sure his head was about to split in two. He was surprised he could still see with how much it hurt, and everything was a little far away yet far too close at once.

He practically stumbled out to the toilets, but it was just as bad inside; the door did very little to protect him from the sound coming from all angles. To make it worse, the bouncer looked at him funny as he went in, and he was certain someone was going to tell him that he wasn’t meant to be in the men’s bathrooms. It wouldn’t be the first time.

He slumped on the floor of the first cubicle he reached, closed his eyes, and pressed his forehead to his knees, bringing his hands up to cover his ears. He pressed so hard it hurt, trying to focus on that sensation rather than the hundred others. It didn’t really work; his breathing wouldn’t even out and the pain wouldn’t stop.

He nearly jumped out of his skin when his phone buzzed, and it made him clamp his hands down over his ears even harder. A few minutes later, he unlocked it, wincing slightly at the brightness of the screen. ‘Hey Felix, I can’t see you,’ the text read. It was from Mercedes. ‘Are you alright? Where are you?’

‘in bthrms,’ he managed. ‘can comr ouy if neeeedd’ It was barely readable, but his hands were shaking and his eyes hurt too much for him to do any better.

After a few minutes, he worked up the energy to stand. One hand still pressed over his left ear (both had taken up a persistent ringing sound he just couldn’t get rid of), he stumbled out of the bathrooms. He probably looked drunk. He wished he was.

Mercedes was right outside the bathrooms, and she said something that got lost to all the sounds around him. Then she moved forward, reaching out to put an arm around his shoulders.

The moment her arm touched his, he flinched away, stumbling against the wall. It was faintly damp, and it made something inside him wilt and die. Mercedes looked at him with that understanding face of hers and said something he still couldn’t catch. He shook his head and pointed to his ears, and her face lit up in understanding. She pointed towards the door, and he nodded.

He shivered when they made their way out into the open. The late autumn air was cold, and he hadn’t been wearing all that much when they left. Mercedes spoke again, and though pain shot through his whole body, he managed to make out that she was telling him they were going to walk home.

It was...difficult to walk in a straight line when the only thing he could really feel was pain, but Mercedes stuck by his side. He didn’t quite manage to process what she talked about, but she was definitely chattering about something. By the time they made it back to the house, he was shaking all over, and while the feelings had subsided a bit everything was still far too much.

Bernadetta met them at the door. “Hey folks, you’re back early!” she said. Felix winced away from the sound, and her mouth dropped open. When she spoke again, her voice was lower. “Sorry,” she said, practically whispering. It was still a bit much, but it was better. “Let’s go to the living room.”

Felix half stumbled next to the two of them and practically collapsed into the spot on the sofa he always sat on. He pulled his knees up to his chest and pressed his eyes against them, screwing them firmly shut. Even the sound of nothing was too much, and he pushed his hands back over his ears until it hurt, rocking back and forth just slightly. None of it made him feel much better.

It took a while, but eventually the world came back into focus again. He was...exhausted. He felt a little as if something had just run him over, and he was still shaking like a leaf. When he opened his eyes, feeling slightly bleary, Mercedes’ face popped into view. “Are you okay, Felix?” she asked.

“No,” he said. And then the words that had been so shut inside him for the past however long it had been burst out. “Goddess, I’m so  _ stupid,” _ he said. “Why can’t I just feel things properly? I just ruined your night, damn it, and made you come home just because I had a stupid reaction to clubbing that no one should have. Why can’t I just feel things in a  _ normal _ way like everyone else?”

“Now, Felix, none of that,” Mercedes said, her voice gentle. He didn’t deserve understanding like that; he’d ruined her evening completely and he’d have to apologise properly later. When he didn’t feel like he was about to cry. “Is that the first time you went clubbing? You didn’t go when you went to university before?”

“No,” he said. This time, he felt slightly dizzy as the words came out. Everything seemed ever so slightly off centre. “Dimitri didn’t like clubbing. I always stayed back with him.”

“You went to university with your ex husband too?” Mercedes asked. Felix nodded. She couldn’t have known, but it was a stupid question; they’d done everything together since before either of them could remember. “Felix, maybe you...I don’t think you’re being stupid about the clubbing. Maybe something else caused this.”

“Great,” he muttered. “Something else is wrong with me.” That was just what he needed. Another way he was broken and hurting everyone around him and would never be able to lead the fulfilling life everyone expected him to.

“No,” Mercedes said, her voice firm. “You shouldn’t think that. If that had happened to me, you would be understanding, Felix, so treat yourself with some of that compassion too.” Felix nodded; she was right, so he pushed the thoughts away for now. He could deal with them later.

“To me, that looked a lot like sensory overload,” she said, like that had any kind of meaning to him. He looked up at her questioningly. “Oh, it’s sort of like...when your brain experiences senses, it makes them bigger or smaller than other people experience them. So something like clubbing, which makes everyone else lose themselves in the music, might be too much. Does that make sense?”

Felix nodded slowly, watching as Bernadetta appeared again, this time with Lysithea in tow. She pressed a cup of hot chocolate into Felix’s hands, and then into Mercedes’. “Wait, Felix,” Lysithea said. “Is Mercedes explaining sensory processing to you?” He nodded. She pulled a confused face. “I thought you already knew about that stuff, aren’t you autistic?”

“I’m...not?” Felix said. He’d never even- he’d never thought about it before. It hadn’t crossed his mind; he didn’t know a thing about the topic. But when he spoke, Lysithea just raised an eyebrow at him.

“Are you sure?” she asked. Felix shook his head and took a sip from his hot chocolate. Made from drinking chocolate rather than the nasty sweet powder; good. “You should get an assessment or something,” she said. “If you want, anyway. It can be pretty handy if you need stuff from it.”

Felix shrugged. He honestly still felt completely fried from the events of the night, and he had no desire to spend any more time thinking about things in his life he wished he’d known a little earlier. He’d spent enough time on those bombshells for a lifetime. “I’ll think about it,” he said.

They dropped the topic after that, and spent the rest of the evening in the living room with hot drinks, various craft projects, and everyone else talking in low voices. Felix still felt completely drained, but things got a little better as the evening wore on. Eventually, Bernadetta shooed him up to bed before the others could get back from their own clubbing, and Felix passed out pretty much the moment he got into bed. He felt like shit, but he was also…

He sort of felt happy. Or at least a little better than he had before.

* * *

The end of term approached, and Felix was- well, he was pleasantly surprised at the feedback he received. He’d never managed to achieve glowing report cards at school (he ‘had an attitude problem’ and ‘needed to get his head out of the clouds’), and he’d constantly felt as if he was two steps behind that term, but his teachers clearly didn’t agree.

“I think they were pleased with my work ethic,” he told his father. A few seconds later, the image of his father smiling made its way to his screen.

“I’m glad to hear it!” he said, voice slightly crackly through the poor suburban Fhirdiad broadband. It made Felix feel a little less silly for being a man in his mid twenties still telling his father about his report cards.

“Thanks,” he said. He managed a small smile, and his father grinned wider.

“Felix,” he said, his voice taking on a slightly heavier note. Felix could guess that, whatever was coming, he wasn’t going to like it. “Are you going to come home for Yunetide?”

Felix’s breath caught in his lungs, his smile fading. “I don’t think so,” he said. His father’s smile turned into a frown. “I don’t know if I can.”

“Ah, I apologise for asking,” his father said. “I thought you were...it seemed as if you were doing a lot better. I thought that if you were happier, you might be ready to see your father.” He gestured at the screen in front of him. “A little more literally so, anyway.”

Felix grimaced. “I am happier,” he said. For a moment, he considered agreeing to go home. But then he remembered how Yunetide tended to go at home, and he… “I think it’s a lot to do with the change in place and people,” he explained. “But you should spend the holidays with Dimitri. You’ll- have fun.”

Rodrigue nodded, but he didn’t look particularly satisfied. Felix felt a little ache in his chest that always grew whenever he thought of Dimitri. “Can I pass on your good wishes for the new year to him?” he asked. “He hasn’t had the easiest year.”

Felix shook his head. Something inside him felt frozen. “Absolutely not,” he said. Rodrigue frowned, but he didn’t push further. Felix ended the call soon afterwards and just hoped Rodrigue wouldn’t call when Dimitri visited.

Instead of going home, Felix spent the holiday with his housemates—friends—who stayed over the break. Dorothea, Bernadetta, and Mercedes stuck around, and Leonie decided to as well once her plans for cheap flights home fell through.

It was...fun. They couldn’t all afford to buy lots of gifts for each other, so they picked names out of a hat; Felix bought a show programme for Dorothea and embroidered a hedgehog for Bernadetta. In return, he received a book on historical swords from Bernadetta and a knitting pattern from Mercedes. It was nice.

Once they were done with gifts, they cooked a meal together. Felix wasn’t even close to being the best cook in the group, and they made an absolute mess of the whole thing, but it tasted mostly fine. There were a couple of bits that were a bit hard, but they’d made too much food to be eaten in one sitting anyway.

As their meal wore on, Felix started to feel a little...off. He was happy, spending this time with his friends, but it reminded him all too painfully of- “You look a little thoughtful there, Felix,” Leonie said. “Penny for your thoughts?”

“You better give me that penny,” Felix replied, managing a small smile. Leonie flipped him off. “I was thinking about…” No. He didn’t need to hide this anymore. “I used to spend my holidays with my ex husband. Even before we were married, we used to- he was orphaned when he was thirteen. He spent every Yunetide with us since then, and this is the first year since-” His voice cracked.

“I understand,” Mercedes said, interrupting his train of thought. That was probably for the best. “When you’ve spent a lot of time with one person, breaking a tradition can be hard. But it’s also an opportunity, even when it comes with pain - you can do new things and make new traditions to replace the ones you’ve lost.”

“Absolutely!” Bernadetta chipped in. “You don’t have to do the things you used to hate doing, and you get to make new memories with new people.”

“You’re right,” Felix said, looking back down at his mostly empty plate with as much of a smile as he could summon. He thought of the tradition they’d always had in his house of leaving a cookie and some birdseed out for the Yune spirit. He’d always thought it was pretty dumb, pretending she existed. He guessed it was good that he didn’t have to do that anymore.

He was glad to have his new friends at his side. When they wrapped the day up, he went to bed feeling sort of happy and sort of sad at the same time. It wasn’t a bad feeling, exactly, just...a feeling. One that he could have and reflect on and know that it wasn’t going to ruin all his friendships or the new bonds he’d made these past few months.

Maybe he wasn’t completely happy just yet, but maybe that was too much to shoot for. Something like this was just fine.

* * *

The rest of the year was good. Well, mostly good. There was one part that was…

“Felix, you’ve been pacing for nearly two hours now,” Dorothea said. “You’ll wear a hole in the carpet, and I think we all want the deposit back on this place once the lease is done.”

“Mmm,” he replied. Because she was right, but he couldn’t stop pacing. His temper had been so bad lately, honestly just completely frightful, but he didn’t know what to do about it.

It had a clear cause: Felix was hormonal. He’d spent most of his life absolutely loathing it when someone pointed it out, and a good portion of that not even knowing exactly why it made him feel quite like it did, but this- well, this was different. Because he was hormonal, and people in their twenties were not also meant to be having puberty. They definitely weren’t meant to be having second puberty.

It made him foul to be around, he knew; all his housemates had told him as much, one way or another. It had also made him way, way, too emotional. So he wasn’t just hormonal - he was stressed.

“I have a paper due in a week,” he said. “I’ve barely started.”

Dorothea raised an eyebrow at him. “What does ‘barely started’ mean here?” she asked.

“I haven’t done any more than the plan,” he said. “It’s over two thousand words, Dorothea, I can’t leave it this long. It’s important for my final grade this year, which-”

“Which doesn’t actually matter,” Dorothea said firmly. “So as long as you write something, and therefore pass, you will be perfectly fine.”

Felix scowled. He was stressed and he wanted to do well and someone telling him he didn’t have to actually didn’t help. He went to say that, and then stopped himself. He didn’t want to be snappy with Dorothea, even if he sort of felt like she deserved it right now. “I should still be working on it right now,” he said.

“So why can’t you?” she asked.

“I’m stressed. Because of it. Which is just making it way too hard to do anything about it.” Dorothea nodded sympathetically, which also didn’t make him feel any better.

“Testosterone is a bitch,” she said with a smile. “I expect it’s better for you than it was for me, but I still wouldn’t wish an extra puberty on my worst enemy.”

“I  _ want _ to do this,” Felix said. He wanted to be able to do this, to work through it. He was going to be on hormones for a couple years at the very least, unless he couldn’t cope with it. And he wanted to have the satisfaction of shaving some shitty facial hair so he didn’t look like his father.

If he couldn’t manage this, then he couldn’t have all the good things that would come with this. He needed to stick it out. “I understand,” Dorothea said, interrupting his thoughts, “but you have to be kinder to yourself, Felix. Take it slow.”

He tried, at least. His mood was very...well, it was very up and down for a long while. He was ecstatically happy when he noticed something different that he wanted to be different, but when he couldn’t see those things, his mood tended to plunge. It was less than fantastic, and he got very sick of it very quickly, but it was worth it. He knew it was, because it had to be.

He got a little better at managing it, and for a while that would have to be enough. He had exams to take, after all, and they weren’t going to write themselves. He spent a lot of time managing his mood in a way he’d never even considered attempting before, but it was good, in a way. At least he managed the whole exams thing at the end of it.

And after a while, it was worth it. His mood stabilised. He had the time and space to grow into all the little things that were changing in his body day by day. He had housemates who were willing to support him in every little thing if he only asked. Sometimes they supported him when he didn’t ask, too.

He grew, just the tiniest bit. A couple of centimeters at most, not even an inch, but it was something. His shoulders broadened out a little. His hair thinned, which wasn’t super great, but also his face got some angles and thank fucking Sothis his periods stopped. It was actually kind of wonderful.

He had the summer to get used to everything properly without being in class, and then he went back to it all and it was suddenly...even more enjoyable. He found that he loved it, actually. The year before had been engaging and challenging and much better than the Goddess-forsaken accounting he did before, but that wasn’t something he loved. Just something he did.

Once he got back to it after that summer, not even realising quite how much his general outlook and mood and...everything had changed, he loved it. He looked forward to opening up his reading and anticipated his next class; he enjoyed each moment of it. It was bizarre, because even when he’d been good at school stuff he’d never liked it. This was something else entirely.

He told his father as much, and his father grinned brightly and moved on to the fatal question that was becoming a sad little routine for them. “Do you think you’ll be able to spare the time to visit?” he asked.

Felix shook his head. He...if it came down to it, he could say that he loved his father. However, that didn’t mean he was going to go home. “I can’t,” he said. “You know that.” He could call regularly, he could talk about his life. But he absolutely could not return to Fhirdiad. Not when he’d carved out something resembling stability for himself here.

“I understand,” his father replied, though Felix knew he’d ask again the next time they called. And the next, and the next, and the next, hoping that one day Felix would relent and say yes, or maybe hoping that he’d actually change his mind and feel okay about it.

It hadn’t been all that long yet, not when the rest of his life stretched out ahead of him, but he couldn’t see himself changing his mind any time soon. He could only hope his father wouldn’t hold it against him.

* * *

The next year passed, and Felix waited in anticipation of the summer. If his first summer had been about adjusting to testosterone, well-

He cried when he woke up from surgery. He’d told himself he wouldn’t—told everyone he wouldn’t, because why would he—but he absolutely did and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it after the fact. Because he hadn’t quite anticipated the outpouring of emotion that would come with everything feeling so right for the first time in...in forever, really.

“Tell me the things you need to remember while you’re still recovering,” the nurse said. He’d been in and out what felt like a hundred times preparing the discharge papers, but finally it looked like Felix was going to taste freedom.

“No lifting things above my shoulders,” he said, “or heavy things at all.” His head still felt a little foggy from all the painkillers, so it took a while for all the details to come back. “Make sure to rest a lot, and don’t strain anything. Basically be careful any time I do anything.”

“Good enough,” the nurse said with a chuckle. “And you have someone to help you around the house, get your groceries, that kind of thing?”

“I have a couple housemates,” he said, though he knew it wasn’t like his answer would actually change anything; the hospital wasn’t a babysitter’s. “I’ll be fine.”

And he was fine. Bernadetta checked in on him every morning, and Leonie and Dorothea appointed themselves as on call to help him with literally anything he could need when he was able to get out of bed and move around again. Mercedes bullied him into not working too hard, and Ashe helped tidy things around his room so he didn’t end up stewing in a heap of rubbish.

As the weeks went by, it got a lot easier to move around without his chest feeling like it had just been split in two (which, to be fair to his body, it had, sort of), and the wounds started to fade into proper scars. His nipples started to look like actual human nipples too, which pleased Lysithea, who immediately informed him that he no longer had any reason not to wear a shirt.

“I thought they weren’t gross anymore,” he said, a teasing smile forming on his face.

“They’re nipples,” Lysithea shot back. Fair.

All in all, he was...happy. His friends cared for him, deeply and truly, and it wasn’t just conditional on him holding it together. It didn’t depend on him being useful, or palatable company, or anything at all.

Their love was- Felix was hesitant to say it, but their care was unconditional, and it felt so good. For the first time in a long while, it made him feel really and truly happy with his life and the direction it was taking.

He’d spent a long time angry and upset, and now he could finally breathe. It was wonderful. The feeling caught him by surprise one evening; it was late summer, and Leonie had dragged them out into the back garden to show off her grilling skills. She was wearing some stupid grill dad t-shirt that was too big to fit any of them, and Lysithea was absolutely ribbing her for it.

And then Ashe decided to point out that Lysithea was ribbing Leonie while Leonie was grilling ribs, and Lysithea threw a cushion at his head. Mercedes dived in to break up the rapidly forming fight between them, and ended up knocking over a glass. The juice tumbled all over Dorothea’s skirt, and Dorothea’s face was…

“I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy in my life,” Felix murmured. It was meant to be to himself; it was sort of embarrassing how happy they all made him. But all of a sudden, there were seven pairs of eyes on him, and he flushed a little pink.

“You’re welcome, asshole,” Dorothea replied with a grin. Felix flipped her off and smiled brightly in return.

Goddess, it was perfect. At that moment, he felt like he didn’t need anything else. If everything could stay like this forever, he’d be perfectly content.


	2. The Gap Between Us

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The past may stay as the past for now, but Felix can't stop it from affecting the present.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter (there are some vague spoilers here): Bad coping mechanisms, past canonical character death. This chapter has a flashback section, which needs the heftiest warnings - dysphoria, the breakdown of a relationship (ending in divorce), a little bit of casual transphobia, (not graphic) vomiting, mental health issues (including some spiralling into thoughts that get pretty close to suicidal). If you need to skip to the end of that segment at any point, please skip to: "Okay," his therapist said, when Felix finally stopped talking  
> After that, the only additional warning is character illness.
> 
> If you're still here after *gestures* all of that, then I hope you enjoy!

But that couldn’t last. Despite how happy he was, even though everyone around him was wonderful and made him content in a way he could barely fathom, he…

He couldn’t stop thinking about the people he’d left behind. Felix knew he couldn’t go back, of course, because he’d firmly resolved as much and he never went back on his resolutions - especially when he stood to lose a lot of stability by putting himself back there. Still, he couldn’t help but wonder how they were getting on.

Were they happy without him? Did they think about him as much as he thought of them? Did the sight of a sword or a cat remind them of things he’d done or said?

And how did they think of him? Was he Felix in their heads, the man of twenty five who couldn’t hold much of a conversation and was still so sharp around the edges (but unfortunately still too round in the face)? Or was he someone else, a shadowy figure who had grown in ways they couldn’t fathom?

Or worse, maybe he was...maybe he was the little girl they’d grown up with. Maybe he was the petulant teenager who refused to shave in the name of feminism. Maybe he was the young woman who married the boy she always loved but never managed to-

That was the problem. Even if they didn’t think about him all that much, he thought about them a lot. And he couldn’t keep Dimitri out of his mind either.

He saw Dimitri everywhere, but never in person. Never even a sign of his physical form. He’d made sure of that, made so sure, and yet he couldn’t avoid associating things with him. He went to the store and saw the cheese that Dimitri liked. He read his coursebooks and someone had a surname that matched Dimitri’s. A surname that would have matched  _ his, _ once.

It wasn’t like he missed him. Felix liked to think he didn’t miss him, anyway. He didn’t miss the arguments, or the silences, or the things they never said to each other but probably should have. He didn’t miss Dimitri, he told himself, but something still ached in a way he couldn’t understand every time he remembered him. And Felix had spent his whole life with Dimitri- he wasn’t going to vanish any time soon.

It came to a head when he was in the third and final year of his degree. He was minding his own business at the end of a class, when someone- someone-

“Hi,” the young man said, sliding into the now vacant seat next to him. Felix had just packed up his notebook, but he stopped moving. The man had to be talking to him. “How’re you doing?”

Felix didn’t even know him. He’d never spoken to this man before in his life, and yet… “Fine,” he said. He was never sure what to say other than that. “The class was interesting.”

“Yeah,” the guy said, even though he’d definitely been on his phone for most of it. “But it’s done now, so are you, you know, doing anything right now?”

“I was going home,” Felix said. He didn’t have anything on, just lunch and then probably some more studying, but-

“Would you like to get some lunch?” the guy asked. His smile was bright and sort of charming. And that was when it hit him.

“I’m-”  _ married. _ Felix caught himself before he could reply. Goddess. He was not married. He’d been not-married for two and a half years. It was nearly as long as he’d been married in the first place, but his brain still shouted at him when he realised this man was flirting with him and now he felt dizzy and- “I’m not interested. Sorry.”

The guy was attractive. His frown was kind of pretty too. He seemed nice, if a little eager, and Felix probably would have dated him, but somehow the thought of doing so filled him with something akin to fear and he didn’t know why.

He pushed all the thoughts away and practically fled the classroom. His head spun the whole time he walked home, and he could feel something ugly rising in his chest. He needed to get away from here. He just didn’t know what ‘here’ was.

When he unlocked the door, finally managing to get the key in the lock after his third try with shaking hands, he was met with Ashe. “Felix!” he greeted. “I thought I heard someone walk up the drive. How was your class?”

“Fine,” he managed. His throat felt tight. He was panicking, and it made him feel so  _ stupid. _ He shouldn’t be panicking over this. He shouldn’t have reacted like this in the first place.

“Are you sure?” Ashe asked. “You’re shaking pretty badly. Do you want to talk about it?”

“I’ll sound crazy,” he said. He knew his voice sounded terse and that Ashe could be sensitive about that sometimes, but he couldn't quite control the tone of his reply.

“Okay,” Ashe said, turning towards the living room. “I’ll listen anyway, and I’ll tell you how crazy it sounds on a scale of one to ten. How does that sound?”

Felix managed to hold back the noise of frustration that bubbled in his throat. “Fine,” he said, following Ashe into the room. He practically collapsed back onto the sofa, bringing his knees up to his chest and hugging them tightly. It was better than fidgeting.

“So what set you off? I-if there is something, of course.”

“There was a boy,” Felix ground out. “A man. In my class. And he asked me out on a date, and I…” He trailed off with a frustrated sound. He felt like an asshole.

“It’s okay to reject someone, Felix,” Ashe guessed. “You don’t have to have a good reason.”

“It’s not that,” Felix said, and Ashe nodded. Goddess, when had he managed to land himself in a house of people who could be so understanding? “It’s- I have a lot of history with a lot of things. Including dating.” Well, the problem was probably more that he didn’t have  _ enough _ history with dating. He only had one history of dating, and that was what had thrown him off so badly.

“That’s okay,” Ashe said. “Sometimes the past is...difficult.”

“It shouldn’t be difficult,” Felix snapped, shooting Ashe an apologetic smile a moment later; that was too harsh. “I cut myself off from all of it specifically because it makes me feel like this. But I still feel like I haven’t moved on.”

“Does it have anything to do with when we met and you got angry at me?” Ashe asked. “We never had that conversation, you know.”

Felix scoffed. “No, that was about my brother,” he explained. “He...died over a decade ago.”

Ashe’s eyes widened. “Hey Felix, it’s not healthy to be hung up like that on something that happened so long ago.” 

“Probably not,” Felix agreed. Sometimes he was still filled with incomprehensible rage when he saw the name Glenn. It was worse if his father ever alluded to him.

“I have a suggestion for you,” Ashe said, “And you don’t have to take it, but… Has anyone ever introduced you to this magical thing called therapy?”

Felix almost laughed. “You’ve got me there,” he said. It had come up a few times - when he got the depression medication, when he had his autism assessment. But he’d never followed through before. “Sure. I’ll...look into it.”

* * *

“Before we really begin,” the person in front of him said, “I just need to establish what you actually want to get out of this. Talking with no direction isn’t helpful to you.”

They were perched on the edge of their chair, and Felix was doing the same to his. Faintly, he remembered something about how people tried to mimic body language to make others feel more comfortable; he shifted backwards and, sure enough, Dr Eisner did the same a few moments later.

Felix sighed. “I want to-” It still sounded silly in his head, even though his housemates had explained over and over that having hang ups from the past wasn’t stupid at all. “I’ve been unhappy in the past, and I see a lot of things that remind me of that. When I do, I panic and spiral, and I won’t let myself be happy.”

It wasn’t something he’d figured out on his own. Even before all of this, Mercedes sat him down with Lysithea and a worksheet from one of Bernadetta’s therapy sessions and tried to work out all the proper words to express this specific problem.

“Okay,” the therapist said. “So you want to deal with moving on from your past?” Felix nodded. “Then let’s talk a bit about what happened. It’ll help you process it.”

It would take a lot of explaining, and Felix knew it would be...bad. Thinking about it was always bad, but that was the point of this; he’d already been warned that he’d be utterly exhausted after any sessions. “Okay,” he replied. “It sort of began like this.”

* * *

It was a Sunday afternoon. He was alone in the house, sat on the sofa attempting to do some work. There was a half drafted email about holiday bonuses in front of him, but he wasn’t looking at it. He wasn’t thinking about it.

Felix was thinking about the fact that he’d just realised he was a man. And he couldn’t stop shaking. Couldn’t stop worrying.

He didn’t even know where to begin. What would his father think, knowing he no longer had a daughter? What about his friends; would they see him as a different person? Could they accept this kind of revelation? What about his coworkers, or the people who’d known him since he was a toddler?

What about Dimitri, who was going to come home to a wife who’d never been a wife all along? Was he never one? Was he one until this moment? Was he still Dimitri’s wife? He didn’t know. It made him feel sick.

He had to do something. He had to- he had to stop the hollow feeling eating at his chest. He had to get rid of the soft hair against his back, his neck. The urge to curl in on himself and scream for everything that just felt so wrong was overwhelming, but doing anything about it...he didn’t know where to begin, or how, or-

He didn’t know what to do. His head felt like it was full of static, or poison, or maybe both. His thoughts kept going down tracks he couldn’t draw himself back from. He wanted to claw at his chest. He wanted to shout until his voice went hoarse.

He wanted to close his eyes and fall asleep and never wake up. He wanted to stop existing. He wanted to never have existed in the first place.

By the time the door clicked, signalling Dimitri’s return, Felix had shakily managed to pull himself together again. Not completely. He felt slightly hollow inside, as if something far smaller than himself was rattling around inside an empty corpse.

“Honey, I’m home!” he called, as he always did. The word honey had something tight forming in Felix’s throat. He felt ill all over again.

He felt sure that his feelings showed somehow. At first, he felt as if there was an arrow shining over his head, showing his thoughts loud and clear to Dimitri. He was sure there was something that must tell him that something had changed. Something important.

Dimitri kept stealing him concerned glances over dinner; there was clearly something up, something visibly wrong with him, but Dimitri wouldn’t say. Felix didn’t know if he was relieved or not, but it was too hard to just relax and let it go for now. Not when he’d finally figured everything out.

He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. Felix had bad moods frequently, bouts of anger and frustration and a whole heap of other things that came and went as they pleased. When Dimitri probed in those times, they tended to argue, and neither of them wanted that. So it made sense for Dimitri to stay quiet; if they’d never talked about their emotions all that much before, why start now?

But still, he couldn’t help but think about what might be said if Dimitri did ask what was wrong. He could imagine so clearly what Dimitri would say: his first reaction would be one of anger. He might accuse Felix of keeping it from him, hiding it when he shouldn’t have.

That wouldn’t be the end of the feelings, though. Dimitri would pity him too, because Dimitri was a wonderful person who was kind and caring. And there would also be- sadness.

Because Dimitri wanted a wife, and children, and a future in this little house in the suburbs with three bedrooms and a garden that was clearly made for more than a couple with no real extended family. And Dimitri deserved that kind of existence. Felix was taking it all away.

As the night drew on, Felix knew he was getting too caught up in his thoughts. If he could just talk about how he felt, even in a roundabout way, maybe...maybe it wouldn’t be too bad. At least they’d be able to get over it.

“Dimitri,” he said, late at night, watching his husband’s back in the darkness. He had to say it. It had been eating at his insides all day and it wasn’t going to stop.

“Mmm?” Dimitri asked sleepily. He didn’t turn over.

“How would you feel if I was actually a man?”

Dimitri paused. Ah, Goddess, there it was. He’d just asked his heterosexual husband if he’d feel okay with being married to a man. Why had he even bothered to ask? Now he was just ruining everything. Hurting Dimitri senselessly. “I don’t know,” came the reply. “I’m...I’m sorry, I’m really very tired right now. Is it okay if we talk about this in the morning?”

He managed a hum to agree. Really, he needed to talk about this now. He needed to get these feelings out in the open. He needed to understand. He needed someone else to understand him.

“As long as you’re sure, honey,” he said, and Goddess he hated the way that even a sweet pet name felt laced with poison. Dimitri called his wife honey. He always did. “I love you.”

He couldn’t summon up the ability to reply. He just swallowed back tears in the way he had for years now and tried not to scream. He hurt so much, in every inch of his body, and- and this was the right thing to do. But it was also the wrong thing. And he didn’t think he had enough room in his heart beside all the pain to sincerely love Dimitri anymore.

Felix slept badly, in fits and starts. Every time he woke, Dimitri was there next to him, breathing evenly in his sleep. Often when he woke in the night, seeing Dimitri there would comfort him. Now it just made him feel worse.

He gave up at six the next morning and got out of bed. For a while, he tried to move silently around their too-large house, but his thoughts kept catching up to him. There was no chance that Dimitri wouldn’t remember the conversation they had last night. Which meant that when he woke, he’d want to talk about it.

In the light of the morning, Felix didn’t want to talk about it anymore. He needed to go into work. That way, it could at least be put off until later.

Felix stared at himself in the mirror, watching the tiredness under his eyes. He looked like shit. He pulled his hair up into a bun. He stifled a gag. All of the suitable outfits he had for work were skirts and blouses. They clung to his body in a way that had always made him uncomfortable, and now he knew why.

Now he knew why, looking at himself was so much worse. There was too much of a curve to his lips, his hair was too long and thick, his nose too small, his cheeks too round. He was small, and soft, and...womanish.

How had he even been able to bear the sight of himself before?

By the time he was done getting ready, he felt too ill to even entertain breakfast, so he just left for work. He’d be early, but it didn’t matter. Anything to get away.

A few minutes after he arrived, he got a text from Dimitri. ‘You were gone when I got out of bed this morning. Everything okay? Xx’

Felix didn’t know what it was about the text, but it made his heart race, and not in a good way. He felt like something heavy had taken a grip around his lungs and was squeezing everything out of them.

He looked around the office and found himself panicking more. Everyone in this room saw him as a particular person. A young, talented, dedicated woman in her twenties who spent too much time on her job and not enough time with her husband. He knew that was the way they talked about him when he wasn’t there - sometimes when he was, too.

It had always made him feel uncomfortable before, but now it made him feel even worse. Did they think he should be off having children? Did they think about what he looked like, how he presented himself? He found himself staring at the computer screen in front of him, unable to do anything.

“Morning!” one of his colleagues greeted, touching him lightly on the shoulder. She greeted him by name, except that name was wrong, and Felix’s head throbbed. He suddenly felt even more off balance, even more detached. The room started to spin.

He practically staggered for the bathrooms. Even in the furthest, pink painted stall, he couldn’t ground himself. The pressure behind his eyes, in his chest, built up, and he threw up into the toilet. When he’d emptied his stomach, he didn’t feel that much better, still shaking.

He couldn’t get his breathing to calm down. He couldn’t suck in a full breath or let one out properly. He could barely see, his vision blurring with something that wasn’t tears. With the back of his head against the cubicle wall, he felt just the tiniest bit like he was dying.

“I think I need to go home,” he managed, once he’d collected himself enough to realise he really, really couldn’t work like this. He’d checked himself in the mirror before he went back out and he could genuinely say he looked like shit; they’d buy that he was ill physically rather than...all of this.

“That’s unlike you,” his boss said with a frown. Felix felt something shrink inside him, but there was nothing he could do about it. He really did have to go.

Holding it together long enough to get home was almost impossible, but somehow he managed it. He got home without hitting any pedestrians and practically collapsed onto the sofa. His eyes were misting up from the moment he got inside and it was all he could do to hold in his sobbing for more than a few moments.

He didn’t understand how it had all gone so wrong. He didn’t know what was  _ wrong _ with him. Well, he did, but he didn’t- he didn’t know. It was too hard to think; it was almost too hard to breathe.

Felix didn’t know how long he spent lying there, barely able to do more than keep his sobbing under control. His nose felt all bunged up, his eyes ached like anything, and every time he moved a sharp pain shot through his head.

The next thing he was aware of was the sound of the door; Dimitri was home. That meant Felix must have been there for hours, but he hadn’t eaten yet. He didn’t think he was particularly hungry, especially after that morning.

“Sweetheart?” Dimitri’s soft words were- they felt like daggers. Physically, because all he wanted to do was bury himself under a very thick layer of earth and never hear anything ever again, and emotionally. Because he was betraying Dimitri. “Please.”

Felix made an effort to sit up, sliding to the edge of the sofa. Dimitri sat on the arm of the other end, far enough away that he couldn’t touch him. Felix didn’t really know what that said. “Please what?” he croaked. He meant for it to sound a little snippier, but he sounded about as pathetic as he felt.

“Can we…” Dimitri hesitated. He knew that whatever this was would be big, clearly. “We need to talk about whatever’s going on right now. Or I can’t help you.”

Felix wanted to shout that Dimitri wouldn’t help, couldn’t help, and probably didn’t even want to. Or he wouldn’t, once he knew the truth. But he also- there was something inside him that wanted Dimitri to know. Wanted him to understand. So Felix sucked in a deep breath, tried and failed to calm the shaking in his hands, and spoke. “I’m a man,” he said. He didn’t manage to hold in another sob.

Dimitri’s face softened, and it was all wrong. No, he wasn’t meant to react like that. “As in, you’re…” Dimitri gestured at the air. That didn’t really say anything at all, but Felix nodded and hoped he’d just move onto the bit where he got angry soon. “What should I call you?”

Felix blinked. He knew, of course; it was the first thing he’d tried. The most important part of trying to find a way to be more comfortable in his head (a way that had totally and utterly failed). But saying it...saying it was different. It made it more real than it already was. “Felix,” he said.

Dimitri nodded. “Felix,” he said, and Felix wanted to hate the way it sounded on his tongue. He didn’t know how to feel about the way his heart lurched when he heard it. It wasn’t a bad feeling, but it wasn’t exactly a good one either. Felix didn’t know if he  _ could _ feel good. “Felix.”

Felix nodded, unsure of what else to say. There was nothing really in his head right now, nothing more than feelings close to fear and an endless spiral of anticipating the disaster that would surely come.

But it didn’t come. At least not yet. “I think it suits you,” Dimitri said, and the little uptick in his voice told Felix that he was attempting a smile. “I don’t- I don’t know exactly what to do. But I can help you...tell other people? Would that be good?”

Felix’s mouth felt dry. He didn’t know what was good. He’d been prepared for something awful to happen when they had this conversation. He’d been anticipating Dimitri’s anger, or at least a deep disappointment, and now he didn’t know how to react. He nodded, but the feeling of sickness in his stomach didn’t subside.

It didn’t subside as he picked at his dinner, nor did it dissipate when he turned in for the night (early, because he couldn’t bear the thought of talking about this even more as Dimitri kept that sickeningly understanding smile on his face). He tossed and turned, unable to get comfortable, and only held still once Dimitri climbed into bed next to him.

He kept his breathing shallow when Dimitri laid down next to him. It was difficult, when Dimitri leaned in close and brushed the hair off the back of his neck. It was even harder when Dimitri mumbled his name to himself.

Felix stayed away practically all night, unable to snatch more than a few moments of rest in between the sound of his thoughts. When the sun rose high enough that he could get out of bed and not feel too bad for disturbing Dimitri’s rest, Dimitri followed him almost immediately afterwards.

“How are you feeling this morning, Felix?” Dimiti asked. The pet names were gone, and Felix wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. Something in his mind told him that it was Dimitri trying to take a step away from their relationship.

“Not great,” he admitted. He still felt sick, and now he was slightly too hot, and everything hurt from the force of his exhaustion. Even opening his mouth to say that, he felt like he was going to be sick.

“I understand,” Dimitri said, even though they probably both knew he really couldn’t. “Should I call into work for you? If you’re too ill to go.”

“You can say I have…” Felix’s mind went blank for a moment as he scrabbled for the words. “A stomach bug. Or something.” His words dissolved into a mumble, but Dimitri nodded, and the understanding look on his face remained fixed in place.

“I’ll do that,” he said. Felix managed to half stumble towards the kitchen table, and he pressed his head to the smooth wood while he listened to Dimitri make the phone call. He tried to ignore the wave of sickness that came over him when he heard that other name, trying to detach himself from the sound.

He looked up again when Dimitri came in. “They said it’s fine,” he said. “You have plenty of paid sick leave.” Felix knew; he hadn’t taken a day off in the four years he’d worked there. “But I’m- I’m sorry, I’m going to have to go to work myself. I’ll fix you some breakfast?”

Felix nodded mutely and watched, still feeling slightly detached, as Dimitri bustled around the kitchen trying to make himself look busy when he was just making two cups of coffee and two bowls of cereal. They ate in silence, and Dimitri finished before him. Felix was stirring his, watching it turn to mush that probably looked a lot like his brain right now.

“I’m sorry I have to go,” Dimitri said, and his voice still held that sweet, understanding sound that made Felix’s stomach flip. He leaned in and pressed a kiss to Felix’s forehead, and Felix tried to ignore the hurt look on his face when he flinched away. “I swear, I will do everything I can to make this as bearable as possible for you.”

And then he was gone, and Felix was left alone with his thoughts.

He’d known it was going to happen, but the sharp plunge they took still managed to surprise him. His mind went straight for ‘I hate my existence’ and wouldn’t stop. He hated his job. It wasn’t fulfilling in any way, he didn’t care about any of his coworkers, but he didn’t have any way to leave it and move on to something better; he was only qualified for finance, and he loathed it.

On top of that, he was utterly exhausted. He’d reached the end of his patience when it came to just about everything in his life, and he didn’t know what to do about it. There was nothing left for him. If he disappeared, it wouldn’t negatively impact anyone at all. He hadn’t made any impact and he never would.

He couldn’t ask Dimitri to care about him like this. He’d never done anything that was worth anything, not for his whole life. He couldn’t give Dimitri anything he wanted. He was worthless to him; Dimitri would be better off without him.

The thoughts didn’t stop all day. They didn’t stop into the evening, or the night. They didn’t stop the next day, or the next.

“Felix,” Dimitri said. There was a note of desperation to his voice. Felix raised his gaze just shy of Dimitri’s eyes, but he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know if there was anything to say, even. “Please, I need to...I need to know what you need.”

“I don’t know.” His voice sounded high and wrong and small. He hated it. He hated everything. He hated being alive and he hated that he had to try, somehow, but couldn’t summon up the energy to.

Dimitri took a week off work, and booked Felix another week off. He didn’t tell Felix if his bosses were angry at him, but Felix could imagine they were. Their patience would run thin, as it should; he was pathetic.

Between feelings of the world constantly turning around him and a pervasive sickness in his body that wouldn’t go away, Felix was dimly aware that Dimitri was trying. Of course he was - he was a good person. He cared.

He was terrible at cooking, but he cooked Felix’s meals. He bought Felix’s favourite foods, even as they tasted like ash in his mouth and were an effort to force down. Thanking him for any of it was completely out of the question.

When he wasn’t trying to look after him, Dimitri was at his laptop. He found a hundred and one resources about coming out, legal conditions for his employer, and how to explain names and pronouns to people in their late fifties. He brainstormed second names with Felix (who didn’t care, couldn’t even bring himself to care). He dug up a deed poll and sent it to Ingrid and Sylvain all by himself.

Dimitri made a long list of everything that needed to be done and everyone who needed to be told. He helped Felix draft scripts of conversations Felix had no desire to have, texts and emails to people he honestly never wanted to see again.

Nothing helped. Nothing changed. Dimitri was a flurry of activity, of hopeful smiles and suggestions Felix couldn’t get into his head and righteous anger and warmth and frustration and care and-

And Felix couldn’t take in a moment of it. It was like it all rolled off him. Dimitri’s flurry slowed, his anger calmed. Nothing changed, but everything did.

“Felix, I can’t… I don’t know what to do.” Dimitri sounded broken and tired and there was something about it that made Felix ache from the tips of his fingers right into the core of his chest. He wanted to double over, to scream, to cry, but he-

The answer appeared. And it was wrong, so wrong, but he knew it was right. “Then don’t do anything,” he said.

He knew Dimitri shouldn’t be doing this. Dimitri shouldn’t even be here. Dimitri should… “What do you mean? I can’t do nothing, you’re-”

Pathetic. “I’m done,” Felix said. His voice sounded stronger than he expected. He didn’t know what that meant, but whatever it was he didn’t like it. He felt like he was very, very far away, and there was something cold and empty in his chest. “We’re done.”

Dimitri’s movement stuttered. He’d been worrying at the hem of one of his sleeves, and now...he was still. Felix hadn’t realised just how much the movement bothered him, and something in his mind freed up as he stilled.

It was immediately replaced by shouting, very far off, when Dimitri looked up at him. Pain shot through him, but it wasn’t real. Either way, it was selfish. He didn’t need to feel this pain. He shouldn’t be sad, when he was the one who’d just told Dimitri they were done. “Are you sure, Felix?”

“I’m sure,” he said. And for good measure, “how many times do I need to say it?”

Dimitri flinched backwards. His fists clenched, his eye screwed shut. Felix ignored the feeling of  _ bad no wrong _ and opened his mouth again.

“We shouldn’t be in a relationship anymore,” he said. “It’s- we shouldn’t be married.” This was for the best. This was better for Dimitri, and because of that it would be better for him. He knew it.

It had to be true.

Dimitri, true to form, didn’t take the first no at face value. “Felix, I feel like we should talk about this a little more,” he said the next day. There were tears in his voice, and Felix tried to distance himself from the sound. It was necessary. Dimitri needed this, and it would hurt less when he was gone. “We’ve been married for years. We can’t jump into a decision like this.”

“I’m not jumping,” he said. He was falling. He wished he was just falling out of love. “I don’t see why you can’t just listen to me. I already told you.”

“But why?” Dimitri asked. He sounded heartbroken and Felix was a terrible person for making him suffer, but he already knew that. This was nothing new. “Felix, I love you. I mean that, and this doesn’t change a thing. I promise.”

That was a lie. “This changes everything,” he snapped. “I’m more different now than you can bring yourself to accept. So just get over it and accept that I- can’t love you anymore.”

That was also a lie. But the way Dimitri’s face contorted had something twisting up inside Felix with something that said  _ good. _ Dimitri should be hurt. Dimitri shouldn’t even want to stay with him. He was hurting Dimitri like the terrible, awful person he was. The person who was irredeemable, the one Dimitri with his bleeding heart shouldn’t even want to help.

And it was done. Dimitri didn’t say another word to convince him otherwise. Felix liked it that way.

It meant he didn’t have to think about it except when he looked at Dimitri. Which he also tried to avoid as much as he could.

Pushing Dimitri out of the way in his head helped a little (though that made him feel worse - Dimitri helped so much, or tried to, and now Felix had denied him the chance to stay by his side it was like a blockage had been cleared). He signed the deed poll; it read Felix Hugo Fraldarius. The Blaiddyd went because there was no point keeping it.

He cut his hair himself with kitchen scissors when he had the energy to care. Then he realised it looked terrible and went to a barber’s, where a man told him it was a shame for such a pretty lady to get all her hair cut off and he walked out and left it uneven, choppy, and looking like shit. He took scissors to it again for good measure.

His clothes were hopeless. He ordered the plainest things he could find online and just hoped they would fit - he got them at least a size too big and relished just a little in the way they hid everything he didn’t want to see. He didn’t look good, but he never had and he couldn’t bring himself to care.

He walked into a doctor’s appointment with a checklist of things he needed, and walked out on several very long waiting lists. He resigned himself on that one. It would happen. One day, it would happen.

And all those things were good. Felix felt sort of good doing them. But he still felt so wrong.

Every day was tense and painful. He still lived with Dimitri, but they’d stopped sleeping in the same bed (Dimitri moved to another room. Felix had to pretend he didn’t lie in the space Dimitri used to sleep in, wondering what that meant every time). Every day was full of things that could no longer be said or done. They didn’t really speak to each other.

Outside their home wasn’t much better. Felix returned to work, now in an ill-fitting shirt and suit, and did exactly the things he used to, but his coworkers avoided him even more.

Until the day someone decided not to avoid him. “It’s a shame you’re changing yourself so much,” someone said, a cheery little smile on their face. Felix just about managed to stop himself from swearing when he spilt some coffee on himself. “You were such a beautiful woman.”

His fists tightened. He kept his eyes downcast. The other coworkers in the room chuckled nervously, unsure as to what to say. He took a breath in. He let a breath out.

Felix managed to hold it together until he got home. When he did, the tears came. He screwed up his face and sobbed, frustrated, into one of the sofa cushions. He screamed and cried because it wasn’t  _ fair. _ He was doing everything he could. He was leaving everything behind just to get a shot at happiness and no one wanted it for him.

“Felix?” Dimitri’s voice. Dimitri’s kind tone. Dimitri’s hand, hovering at his back, unsure of whether to touch him anymore because they weren’t together. They weren’t a couple and why would they touch each other, after knowing each other for over twenty years? “Did something happen? You can talk about it with me, if you wish to.”

Felix closed his eyes even tighter and slammed his hands over his ears. It didn’t help, and it didn’t stop him from hearing Dimitri’s reaction (sadness mixed with disappointment mixed with a sympathy Felix didn’t deserve). But he didn’t want to be able to hear it and he couldn’t speak. He couldn’t do this anymore.

He quit his job. It was only a matter of time, he told himself, but there was a certain disappointment in himself anyway. He was a failure at everything in his life.

“I think you made the right decision,” Dimitri said, his voice so encouraging as Felix put down the phone.

“I didn’t do it for you,” he snapped. Dimitri had no bearing on the decision. “This is for me.”

“Yes, of course,” came the reply. The hurt reply. “I apologise; I should have known that.”

A moment passed between them. A possibility that hung in the air. Dimitri, in front of him, encouragement infused in every word.

Felix turned away.

It wasn’t just Dimitri. He organised a little gathering at Ingrid’s, wanting them all to get together as friends again. There were things that went unsaid: Felix remembered them as children, playing girls versus boys games; the numbers were uneven now. The other thing was friendship. For many years, he’d never had to interact with Dimitri as a ‘friend’. They weren’t a ‘friendship group’.

He’d wrecked it all, and he knew it. He walked into the house knowing that he was the element that had changed. Everyone smiled and laughed around him, trying to include him in the conversation. They said his name, over and over and over. Felix’s smile stuttered once, twice. It was difficult to summon it when all he could hear was buzzing in his ears and he didn’t know how to breathe with Dimitri right next to him.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” he forced out in a rush. The words jumbled in his head, but maybe they came out alright when he spoke. He realised, after he spoke and after he stood, that he’d interrupted someone. He didn’t know who.

He knelt on the bathroom floor and pressed his head against the cool edge of the sink. He let the sounds around him fade to nothing as he calmed his breathing and recentred his mind. He didn’t think he could remember anything that had actually been said that evening.

Something akin to fear rose in Felix’s chest as he moved back towards the living room. He could hear them talking in voices far more hushed than before he left. He stopped in the doorway, even though he knew he shouldn’t, and waited. He knew what he was going to hear.

“It’s just slightly worrying,” Ingrid said, her voice heavy. “I know he’s never been the cheeriest of people, but he seems so...cold. Even with you, Dimitri, and he’s  _ never  _ cold with you.”

Dimitri’s back was to him, but Felix saw him stiffen. It was a gesture he was well practised in recognising by now. “I understand why he no longer feels close with me,” he said. Felix could practically see Ingrid’s frown as she gestured for him to elaborate. “We’re no longer together.”

It didn’t get easier to hear. Felix felt sick down to his stomach as Sylvain and Ingrid reacted with something that he could only describe as horror. “Oh gosh, Dimitri, I’m so sorry for bringing it up,” Ingrid said, leaning over to rub his shoulder. Felix should have done that. At least once.

“It’s perfectly fine,” Dimitri said, his voice still so heavy with something Felix knew was regret. He’d heard it almost every time Dimitri opened his mouth in the last few weeks.

“No, it’s not,” Ingrid said, her voice firm. “Felix is perfectly entitled to his choices, but this is silly. If he doesn’t want you, then you deserve better.”

Felix didn’t go back into the living room; he wasn’t welcome. He walked all the way home in the dark and cold, barely caring about the possibilities that could meet him alone at night. If something happened...well, no one would lose anything.

Back in the house, completely alone (had they not noticed that he didn’t return? What were they saying about him to Dimitri in that too-warm room?), Felix knew. He was unhappy here. He was unhappy with these people who no longer liked him and probably felt they didn’t know him.

Felix didn’t think he could blame them. He only recognised himself in the mirror because he spent too long staring into it.

And, just like before, a solution was right there. He was unhappy here. He hated all the people he had to interact with and the thought that they felt like they knew him in some way. He loathed every moment he spent with Dimitri, but he couldn’t exactly get away when he lived with him.

He hated his life and the path he’d taken. So why not throw it all away?

His degree was a dead end, so he should just...get a new one. The city was full of memories, so he should go somewhere else. Somewhere brighter, warmer, where the cold wouldn’t creep into his bones every time he stopped moving.

It seemed natural enough, and it filled him with a kind of energy and hope that he hadn’t experienced in so long. He’d barely even realised that he could feel like this anymore; when he pulled up his laptop and searched out the kinds of things that maybe he could do with his future, he felt...hopeful.

Studies. He was good at studying. There was something in him that relished in the feeling of being buried in a book, even when he hated every author and sometimes every word he read. If he moved somewhere else to study, he could meet new people. He could leave everything behind and build something new.

The only thing he needed for that was money. And, fortunately, he was quite literally sitting in it.

Dimitri’s family left him a lot of money. Enough to buy a little starter home meant for a couple and a couple of children; a home that they no longer needed, of course. Felix paid half with the inheritance that came from Glenn dying in action.

So, when Dimitri made his way home, bleary eyed and looking decidedly nervous as he walked through the door, Felix greeted him with a proposition, wide eyed and  _ feeling  _ something for the first time in weeks that wasn’t dread or despair or emptiness.

“We should sell the house,” he said. “I want to move somewhere else.”

Dimitri let out a very familiar sigh that seemed to get longer every time Felix heard it. “I’m happy to do whatever will make you happy,” he said. It sounded hollow to Felix, but he didn’t know what that meant anymore.

Despite the mutual agreement that it was the natural - and easiest - step to take next, the divorce papers were hard. It was necessary. It was right, even, to take the step to free Dimitri from any lingering obligation to take care of Felix in any way.

Dimitri’s face was carefully blank in a way that Felix knew hid something deeper. He’d seen the expression so many times after Dimitri’s parents died, and now he got to see it for this. It gave him no joy to sign his name (a new signature, matching the name on the papers that didn’t match the commemoration of their marriage. Nothing fit together, everything was wrong. This was wrong).

There was no joy in anything, and it only got harder as they packed everything from the past up in little boxes. Felix wished he could throw away the memories attached to them all, but he knew he couldn’t. These were his belongings, and he couldn’t very well go to Enbarr with nothing.

It was hard to pack everything up, even with the promise of freedom that followed it. A whole life together, laid out before him, being put away, split in half, divided in a way that the objects were never intended to be.

A whole life together, at an end. Felix put the last item in the top of a box, sealed it with a piece of tape, and started the process of moving it to the car.

The story was over. A fairy tale with a sour ending that no one wanted to see.

* * *

“Okay,” his therapist said, when Felix finally stopped talking and reached for a tissue. There was snot all over his face and he felt absolutely gross. But it was out. He’d said it all. “It’s good that you were able to talk about all of that. Has it helped at all, to get it out in the open?”

Felix took a moment to wipe his face before grabbing another tissue. “I think so,” he managed. His voice sounded a little rough, and he couldn’t imagine that it was going to get any better as the day went by. “Reflecting on it all sort of- helps.”

“What do you think it helps with?” they asked. Felix paused again, unsure of what really was helpful about it all. He just felt...tired, but not entirely in a bad way. “It was clearly a very difficult time, and I’m sorry to hear how much it all affected you. Do you think you can learn anything from thinking about those experiences you had?”

He couldn’t think of anything, but… He scoffed. “I was stupid about it all, really.”

Immediately, Byleth shook their head. “No, you weren’t. You were suffering. You’d clearly been pushing down a lot of very difficult feelings for a long time, and you were in an environment that left you unable to pull yourself out of that suffering.”

Felix hummed. “I suppose I was...around people and places that hurt too much,” he said. They nodded, encouraging him to continue. “Maybe they could have helped, but they were also the sources of the things that caused me most stress.”

“Exactly,” they said. “Now, we’re running out of time for this session, but I just want you to sum up the things you think you’ve learned from that. Not the things you’ve just said.”

“I feel better thinking about it,” he decided. “I have a kind of perspective on it that means it hurts less.” Still, there was an ache deep in his chest, and had been for the whole time he recounted what happened. “I don’t think I’ll ever be over it entirely. But maybe it’ll get easier to move on.”

* * *

Moving on didn’t get much easier over the course of the next few months, but the future approached at an alarming speed. Felix threw himself into his books, his notes, and kept his head down for the final stretch.

His father didn’t make it for his graduation ceremony; a week before he was due to fly down, he had a fall at home. Instead, Felix waved his first class degree at the camera when he got back, still dressed in his graduation robes, and his father grinned from ear to ear.

“I’m so proud of you,” he said. Felix had heard those words from his father so many times before, but they felt especially real now.

He tried not to launch himself into a job straight after graduating; he had a vague idea of what he could do, but something inside him reacted against going back to work again. He’d hated work and adored the studying he did for the last few years, and he had no desire to repeat the feelings that had caused him to quit the accounting job.

As such, his summer was relatively free; he looked around for something, but not actively, when Lysithea approached him with a pitch.

“You know history stuff,” she said, unceremoniously plonking her monstrously huge gaming laptop on the dining table as he sat there with his lunch. He nodded; he did indeed know history stuff. “I want to use my graphic design for something real. Take a look at this for me?”

And Felix did. He started off slow, his brain still running a little bit behind after the exertions of his exams, but he warmed up to Lysithea’s pitch quickly. She wanted to create an online learning platform; she did the graphic design, and Leonie did the web design. Dorothea would produce videos, Bernadetta would write the scripts, and Felix would do the historical research.

Ashe gushed over concepts and literature and was generally his genuine, lovely self, and Mercedes was apparently a dab hand at social media. With their combined efforts…

Well, the first video didn’t do amazingly. It wasn’t a huge flop, but it wasn’t anything special either. But the second one gained a little traction. The third one gained some more.

And the fourth… Felix suggested the topic of the queer subtones in Loog and the Maiden of Wind, complete with literary analysis and cross referencing with original records on Loog and Kyphon. And it went viral.

From there, things got a little out of hand. Lysithea signed a sponsorship deal with a company that sold textbooks. Their ad revenue went through the roof. At the end of their second month working on it, now churning out something or other every few days, Lysithea presented him with a paycheck.

“It’s not tons,” she said. “Especially compared to your fancy schmancy accounting wages. But it’s something. Is it enough to entice you away from a real job?”

Felix looked at it. “The same amount went to everyone this month?” he asked.

Lysithea hummed. “Well, Mercedes got a little less because she does it part time, and Leonie got her freelancing rate, which is a little more, but yes, pretty much.”

Carefully, Felix totted up the numbers in his head and thought about how much their bill was. “And we’re looking at similar or increased revenue next month?” Lysithea nodded. “Well, you can call yourself my boss, then.” Lysithea’s smile was huge, and Felix’s wasn’t far behind.

It was a really good job. Of course, Felix adored historical research. And sure, sometimes he had to read absolute drags of articles. Historians were often completely incapable of actually writing, and that made his job more difficult than it  _ should _ have been, strictly speaking. But that didn’t detract from everything else.

The ‘everything else’ was huge. It was being able to afford a subscription to articles he wanted to read and keeping up to date with the most interesting stuff he could find. It was writing up his work in a way that wasn’t designed to be read by other people who worked in academia.

It was seeing his notes absolutely transformed by Bernadetta, who was an absolute wizard with all of it, and then… One thing led to another, and when he complimented Bernadetta on yet another script he found himself in front of a camera, reading said script. Going off-script with Dorothea to talk about theatre.

It felt good. Inexplicably so, especially when he saw all the emails from people who were learning from the videos. There were messages from older people, younger people, teenagers, teachers...it felt like Felix was actually doing something for their lives, making a real difference.

“We add to them all the time,” Felix explained to his father. He’d told his father the name of the website several times, but apparently he couldn’t quite work the website (or, he was pretending so Felix would show him), so Felix shared his screen in a call and pulled up various videos.

His father watched a handful, smiling all the time, but there was clearly something else. When the third video lapsed into the end screen, accompanied by Dorothea’s carefully composed jingle, there was a pause. “Felix,” he said, his voice laden with caution. “Can I show these to some of your old friends? Just to show them what you’re doing now.”

“No,” Felix snapped. The smile on his face faded, and there was a cold feeling in his chest.

His father frowned. “I understand,” he said, but he still looked decidedly upset. Felix didn’t get it, really. Even though he’d said it a hundred times or more at this point, he didn’t think his father actually understood that he had boundaries.

It had been years. Over three years, in fact, since Felix moved out to Enbarr and far, far away from Fhirdiad. He hadn’t heard hide nor hair from any of the people he knew in Faerghus since then, and he liked it that way.

Over three years. Longer than he’d been married to Dimitri.

Felix ended the call quickly afterwards with a cold goodbye. His father still sounded disappointed as he closed the call, and Felix couldn’t help but feel bad. Why did he have to keep holding everything back?

There was something in him that knew it was irrational to be so averse to his friends even thinking about his existence. He’d known them his whole life before; surely they deserved to know he was, at the very least, doing okay. But he didn’t want to think about them thinking about him. It hurt.

Maybe he really was never going to get over this. Maybe he was going to be hung up on his childhood for his whole life, unable to move past any of it. Maybe he’d be unhappy for the rest of his days, even if it was only a fraction of him that felt it.

He hated the thought. He hated the idea that there were aspects of himself he could never get rid of, even when he replaced all those things that caused him so much pain.

It had him in a funk, just for a little while. He’d learned by now that bad feelings came, and they didn’t really pass, but he could work on making them more manageable.

“I thought I was fine,” he confessed. His therapist nodded. “But I feel like...all those old emotions I had are piling up again, and it gets more difficult to manage every time they get mentioned.”

“Why do you think that is?” they asked. “What bothers you so much about them knowing what you’re doing or where you are now?”

“I’m worried they’ll try to contact me.”

“Why?” they asked. Felix could see where this was going.

“Because I don’t want to see or hear from them ever again.”

“Why?” Felix grit his teeth, but managed to summon up a reply.

“It’s painful,” he said. “They’re painful, because they were part of that time when I was just so…” He gestured at the air. “I was so unhappy and I don’t want to be reminded of it.”

His therapist nodded, that understanding look forming on their face. The expression they made when they were about to tell him something that he didn’t really want to hear. “That was most of your life so far,” they said, their voice gentle. “It’ll be a significant formative period in your mind for the rest of your life. You can’t get rid of all those things, and you’ll always be reminded of it somehow.”

“Okay,” he said, his voice a little terse. “I want to avoid it as much as possible, then, even if some parts of it are inevitable.”

“Okay,” they said. “And what can you do to make the reminders you will encounter less harmful to you?”

Felix bit his lip. He didn’t know. He knew that he was meant to work on constructive things, not just cutting everything he disliked out, but at the same time… “I don’t know,” he admitted after a moment. He hated having to admit he couldn’t think of something to them, but that was the reality of it.

“That’s fine,” they replied. “I’d make the suggestion that you should try and reclaim some of that past for yourself. That way, the mere mention of it won’t make you snap.”

“How would I even do that?” he asked, only sort of talking to himself. He didn’t really know how to do things by halves; they were in his life or they weren’t.

“You should start by apologising to your father for snapping at him,” they suggested. “Once you’ve done that, and removed, say, the bolt on the door, then you can think about opening it and letting some of that past back in.”

He nodded. He could apologise, at least; he’d got a lot better at that since he left Faerghus. He was happy to say sorry, even, because he really had hurt his father and he didn’t actually want that. Even when he’d said he did, he knew he didn’t. Not really.

That said, there was a boundary that had to remain firmly in place, and he didn’t want his father becoming a form of contact between him and all those things he’d left behind. They were in the past, and as far as he was concerned they should stay that way until  _ he  _ was ready. Not until his father thought he was ready.

At some point, he knew he’d have to at least get some closure with them. Byleth was right; they were a huge part of his history, a much larger one even now than he wanted them to be, and he couldn’t just leave the wound open for the rest of his life. For now, though...for now, he couldn’t. Years of pain could wait just a little longer.

Time moved on, and he still didn’t contact them. He didn’t really know how to restart the conversation he’d ended himself. Would they want to speak to him now? If he did go back to talk to them, would they like him?

He’d changed a lot since then. Physically, obviously (as he mused, Felix ran his fingers along the scarring on his chest - it had been two years since then), but there were also other things. He was older, more mature. He had a different kind of confidence, one that was based more on actual skills.

He was different. If he saw Dimitri on the street, would he even recognise him? If they spoke, would his voice sound completely different? How would Dimitri feel about the way he’d changed?

Felix knew that, technically, it was useless thinking about what Dimitri might think. The man was no longer in his life in any description, and he had no right to have extensive opinions on the man he used to be married to.

But at the same time...Felix found his thoughts straying to the things Dimitri used to say to him. About how beautiful he was. Felix had cut his hair a while back, but he’d let it grow long again; now, he couldn’t help but think of the way Dimitri always loved it.

Dimitri used to very gently brush his hands down Felix’s waist, holding him like he was fragile. In the years since, Felix had filled out a little, in part because he was actually eating properly.

And then he had a horrible thought. But when his mind was travelling in circles and he couldn’t quite break himself out, he couldn’t stop himself from thinking it over and over. Couldn’t stop himself from opening the profile on social media, just to check.

He was surprised that the photos of their wedding were still up online. It was years ago now, and the whole thing was a closed chapter of both their lives. But the photos remained, and Felix couldn’t help but stare at the image of his father walking someone who was undeniably him down the aisle.

The photos were...Felix looked tiny, next to Dimitri. Both of them were smiling like it was the happiest day of their lives. Felix could vaguely remember the day itself, though there was a sort of mist that hung over the whole thing. It hadn’t been as happy as the photos made it look. A bitter feeling rose in his throat as he kept looking, kept scrolling. There must have been hundreds of images.

A knock on the door. Leonie entered. “Felix?” she checked. “I called, but you didn’t answer. Everything alright?” She glanced over at Felix’s laptop and grimaced. “You know, you really shouldn’t look at those.”

Felix took a deep breath in. Looked at the photo of him and Dimitri leaning in for their first kiss as a married couple. He closed the tab and just breathed. “It’s been a long time,” he said. His voice sounded just a little too small. “I shouldn’t even think about it anymore.”

“Yep!” Leonie said cheerily, moving in to clap him on the back. Felix shook his head just before she reached him and she nodded, backing away. “Anyway, it’s nearly time for dinner. You might have managed to get yourself out of prep work.”

Felix chuckled and closed his laptop, pledging to block the website where the photos were stored later. He was right, and Leonie was right; he needed to move on from that day. At the very least he needed to stop torturing himself with it.

* * *

Time kept marching on, and other things changed. Things that weren’t for the better.

His father wasn’t an old man, but he wasn’t a young man either. He’d spent a lot of time doing a lot of things that weren’t always the best for someone his age, or of his temperament. He’d worked while raising two children, lost one, and stressed over the other for far too long.

So maybe Felix was a little bit to blame for the way that his father was in and out of hospital for various check ups, and the way his face aged more every time Felix saw him, until there was something undeniably sickly about him.

There was a lot of merit to the argument that Felix should go to see him. He hadn’t seen him properly for years, after all, and surely the bond of father and son should stretch beyond something petty like oh, an adolescence and early adult life of trauma and repression that left him broken and exhausted.

His father asked a lot, for a while. And Felix felt a little bad for always saying no. But he also valued his sanity, and his health, so things continued to move on. Time slipped away, and his father got older and older until...that day.

There were five years between his departure and that day. That day that shifted everything in ways Felix had never imagined.

Felix listened, helpless, as his father launched into a coughing fit for the second time in their short call. After a second or two, he muted himself, but Felix could still see him. It hurt to watch.

When Rodrigue looked up again, letting out a breathy apology, Felix realised something; in the last couple of calls, his father hadn’t said a thing about Felix visiting. Something had changed, and his father didn’t want him to feel pressured to see him when he was suffering.

Felix knew the feeling. He also knew exactly what that feeling called for. “Father,” he said, his tone slightly cautious. He could have misread what his father really wanted. “Would you like me to come and visit? For a week or so, next month.”

His father’s expression brightened, and Felix felt something light up inside him in turn. He felt terrible for putting it off for so long, but he’d changed his mind now. He could alleviate some of the hurt so many years apart had caused between them, and now all that time had passed that was the best he could do. 

“Can I take some time off?” Felix asked that evening. He and his housemates tried to separate work and not-work spaces, but when they lived together and worked in the house it was difficult sometimes.

Lysithea looked at him like he’d grown a second head. “Of course?” she said. “Felix, it’s been two years and you haven’t taken more than a day off at a time. Of course you can take some time off.”

Felix nodded. Everyone was looking at him, concern painted on their faces. “It’s for family reasons,” he said. An understanding nod rippled through the group. “My father is ill, and I haven’t seen him in a long while.” 

“You should take all the time you need,” Dorothea said. “Family is important, and even if Lysithea  _ didn’t  _ grant you the time off, I’d make her.”

Felix’s body flooded with relief. He didn’t know what he’d expected, other than this exact reaction, but there was a fear that had seized him with his realisation. He needed to see his father again: he didn’t want their regret-tinged parting in Fhirdiad so many years ago to be the last time.


	3. Familiar Difference

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felix returns home. A death, funeral, and several reunions later, he realises that the distance between him and Dimitri isn't quite as wide as he thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dimilix? In my Dimilix big bang? Well hey, maybe it'll happen one day folks
> 
> Warnings for this chapter are: references to past character death, illness, canonical character death, grief and mourning, references to poor mental health, references to divorce, past eating issues, implied transphobia, some light discussion of politics, references to shitty parents

Felix hadn’t been home for a long, long time when he finally stood in that airport. The last time he’d been there was during one of Glenn’s visits back home when he was on leave, when Felix, barely up to his father’s shoulder, stood with a sign and a cheery smile, watching on his tiptoes for his brother to return.

Felix stood on the other side of that scene now, looking out for his father’s head in the crowd massed in front of him as he wheeled his suitcase—packed for a casual fortnight away—into the arrivals lounge.

His father smiled so widely when Felix finally spotted him that he almost didn’t mind when his father wrapped him in what he could only describe as a bone-crushing hug. It had been five years, he could cut him a little slack. “It’s good to see you again,” his father said, so much warmth in his voice.

Felix frowned, not really feeling any malice as he replied. “You see me every week,” he grumbled.

“It’s not the same,” his father said, a solid conviction in his voice that had Felix biting back any retort. This visit was for his father, and he could behave just a little. It wasn’t for long, and with time he could go back to being the thoroughly flawed son he was.

Behaving was easier than he expected, honestly - maybe he’d mellowed out a little in his time away, but getting on with his father was easier now. When they used to have conversations face to face, almost every one of them would end in his father apologising for saying something that upset Felix and Felix not accepting the apology and storming off.

Now...the only thing that really had Felix on edge was the problem of all the people he knew who were just- somewhere. Somewhere close, somewhere they could probably see him if he turned the wrong corner at the wrong moment. It had him tempted to look down every street before he walked down it.

But it was manageable. He could do it, even if he felt a spark of fear every time he saw something he might have half recognised. What wasn’t so manageable was...well.

His father was dying. Felix knew this. He’d talked to his father about it, even. But seeing it with his own two eyes was different. Seeing the array of medication he took three times a day. Seeing the various mobility aids, the emergency oxygen by his bed, the device for testing his blood pressure left out on the side by the carer.

His father clearly tried to ignore it, in the way Felix knew he always had ignored his problems (a childhood waiting for his father to come home from work, an adolescence with silences stretching on endlessly between them). Instead of letting Felix help with everything, or taking it easy, he wanted to do everything with him.

Felix couldn’t exactly blame him, so he went along with it, even when they were things he’d never had a single ounce of interest in. Like fishing; Felix did  _ not  _ have the patience for fishing and never had, but Rodrigue had picked it up from some friend he’d met at bingo, and that guy always took his children fishing, so…

He sat for hours at the water’s edge, listening to his father prattle on about whatever he wanted to. Occasionally, he’d turn the conversation back towards Felix, asking him about the latest things he’d done in his work, all the bits that didn’t make it into videos and articles and podcasts.

Despite it, Felix sort of enjoyed himself. He was dimly aware that he had a tendency to work himself too hard (though if he ever admitted it to anyone they’d never let him live it down), and doing absolutely nothing was dull in a way he couldn’t help but like. Not that he’d tell anyone.

It helped that it was something his father could actually do - no movement was perfectly fine for Rodrigue, and that meant it was okay with Felix. His father had an alarmingly long list of things to do with him, but his illness limited what Felix actually wanted him to do, even if he  _ wanted  _ to see the shrimp exhibit in the museum (he didn’t).

Felix couldn’t help but worry he was pushing his father too far. Every moment where he was out of breath, every stumble that Felix had to catch, quick as lightning, had his heart thundering in his throat. Yet his father always insisted on doing more things, taking him to more places he wanted Felix to experience with him.

He tried to steer his father towards the things they could do together more safely - they watched a film together that they’d seen in the cinema. It was something Felix barely remembered, though he could recall being excited for it when he saw the trailers at some point. It was just one of those things; the film wasn’t even that good, but it was-

“It’s nice to spend time with you again,” Rodrigue said, putting into words all those things Felix couldn’t bring himself to say. “Making up for lost time a little. Not that you-”

“I get it,” Felix said. He  _ had  _ made his father lose out on a lot of time they could have spent together. There were many things they used to do before that fell to the wayside in those five years, including one thing in particular. That one thing Felix could never get out of his head. Glenn.

They didn’t visit Glenn’s grave. They hadn’t done so in years, and with his father like that...well, it was unnecessary. Felix didn’t want to, and his father didn’t suggest it either.

But Glenn, as always, was the shadow at their door. Being back in the house where Felix grew up alongside his brother left him seeing him in the strangest of moments. Not literally, of course, because he wasn’t Dimitri (he hated that his brain still went to Dimitri, but he supposed it was inevitable when he was back here), but there was an element to him in every room.

“I miss him sometimes,” he commented that evening. His father was unusually tired that day, his eyes sliding closed at every moment while they watched a music concert on TV, but Felix didn’t mind. He liked that there could be quiet between them sometimes; it was hard to remember that feeling after so long of only seeing each other to speak.

“You mean Glenn?” Rodrigue asked, his voice soft. Felix nodded.

“I don’t think about him as much as I used to,” he admitted. He felt a little bad about it, because Glenn had basically defined his life for- for a long time. Maybe longer than he should have.

Then again, maybe he shouldn’t think about that, because his father… “I miss him every day,” he replied. Felix knew that answer was coming. “But I’m glad to hear that you don’t. I’d never expect you to carry that around with you for the rest of your life.”

It went unsaid that Felix had a lot more life left to live than Rodrigue. “I don’t intend to,” he said. “The past is-” painful. Something he never wanted to return to, something he spent half his life steeped in and the past five years running from. “Sometimes you have to be able to move on.”

“I’m happy to hear that,” Rodrigue said. “I hope that you can. I have many regrets with how I handled that past between us, and I hope you know that.” He looked up, and Felix nodded. They’d discussed the issue more times than he would have liked, honestly. “Going on, I hope you can remember the happy moments over the sad.”

Felix helped his father to bed with a small sense of peace settling in his chest. He was glad to hear those words, and he intended to take them to heart.

Death was hard. Felix knew that well, and he knew that his father experienced it too, far more than Felix ever had. To hear that his father would want him to be happy despite the grief that would inevitably come set something at ease within him.

The next day started the same as all the rest. He woke up, made his father some breakfast, and took it back up the stairs so they could eat together as Rodrigue woke up properly. It was a routine of sorts that had built up between them, and while Felix knew it maybe indulged his father a little too much, he was happy to do it.

“Morning!” he called, knocking on the door with his elbow before he pushed it open. The sun peeked through the curtains, just a little, and Felix moved to that side of the bed so he could open them once he’d set the breakfast tray down.

His father-

Felix put his back to the now-closed bedroom door and slowly slid down it. There was something buzzing in the back of his head. Something, something…

There was so much. This was- this was too much, and Felix felt as if there were a hundred things stacked up in his arms. He had ten seconds to run a mile with a stack of plates piled high, but he was running through water.

He had to- he needed to-

There were people who loved Rodrigue. People Felix knew, people Felix didn’t know. They needed to know what had happened, needed space to mourn and someone to share their memories with. Felix had done a lot of that, once upon a time when the headstone in front of him read ‘Glenn Fraldarius, beloved son and brother.’ He didn’t know if he could do it again.

And then there was everything else. His father owned this house. Felix didn’t live here full time. His father had money, a will that had to be read and administered. His father had extended family who weren’t here, who hadn’t been here to help him.

...Then again, who was Felix to make judgements about that? His father had  _ close _ family who hadn’t been here. Who hadn’t been here for years.

Felix stumbled, as if in a daze, towards the living room. On the coffee table, plugged into the wall, laid his father’s phone (“You plug it in out here? You’re such an old man,” he’d teased, his voice fond, and his father smiled). Felix had the passcode (“Just in case you have to contact someone I need but I can’t do it.”), so he opened it up, and…

There was a text notification; just the one. It read ‘Goodnight Rodrigue, I’m glad to hear things are going well. Please let me know when you’d like me to cook for you again, it’s always a pleasure to visit. -Dimitri’

Felix’s thumb hovered over the button. He blinked, but he couldn’t even weigh it up in his mind. Everything was filled with static and he just needed to-

He pressed the call button. It rang once, twice, three times, a fourth, and Felix was just about to realise his mistake and hang up when- “Good morning, Rodrigue!” came Dimitri’s greeting. He sounded different, his voice a little deeper than Felix remembered (but what  _ did  _ he remember?). “I wasn’t expecting you to call this morning; I thought Felix was visiting.”

“Hello,” Felix managed. His heart had picked up the pace again, but he still felt very far away. Too far away.

Dimitri’s voice stuttered on the other end of the phone. “Oh, my apologies,” he said. “Is everything alright? I thought that this was my- friend, you see. Are you a paramedic?”

Of course. Dimitri hadn’t heard his voice in years. There was no way he’d recognise it from a single word, but… It made a good excuse. A reason for Felix to call. A- the first way to tell someone what had happened. “I’m afraid so,” he said. Felix heard Dimitri take in a sharp breath on the other end. “I regret to bring you the news that Mr Fraldarius has recently passed away.”

Dimitri let out a quiet noise. Despite himself, despite the distance...Felix recognised it as surprised mixed with unmistakable pain. “I see,” he said, his voice more carefully controlled than Felix ever remembered it being. “Thank you for informing me of that. May I ask where his son is? I’m...I shouldn’t be registered as his next of kin.”

Shit. He couldn’t exactly admit the truth now, not when he’d just lied to him. “Felix Fraldarius has already been contacted,” he lied again. Well, it was the truth in a way. “His car wasn’t here when we arrived, but he’ll be back in the house shortly.”

“I see,” Dimitri said. Felix couldn’t quite believe that he’d fooled him, but he wasn’t out of the woods just yet. The next words turned his blood to ice. “Will I be able to visit his body at the morgue?” he asked. “To say goodbye.”

Felix was in the unfortunate position that he actually did know the protocol on this. “Felix Fraldarius will have to grant you permission,” he said, and he could  _ hear _ Dimitri’s disappointed sigh. Had he given up? “I would recommend visiting a little later to sort things out.”

“Okay,” Dimitri said. His voice had evened out a little, the feelings Felix had heard just a moment ago now obscured. “Everything will still be- will I be able to visit the morgue this evening? Or tomorrow?”

“Yes,” Felix said. His brain kept mapping the rise and fall of Dimitri’s voice and he willed himself to just  _ stop. _ There were so many more important things going on right now.

Dimitri said goodbye, thanked him again, and hung up the phone. Felix put it down, hands shaking. Dimitri.

Dimitri. Shit, now he had to prepare to see Dimitri. He had to- he hadn’t even planned to see him again while here in Fhirdiad. He’d barely even thought about it and definitely hadn’t seriously entertained it and now his father was dead and he had to talk to Dimitri about it.

His breathing sped up, his heartbeat raging out of control, but he knew he had to keep a handle on everything. Just to keep it together long enough that he could get everything sorted and then break down.

Step one. He called the hospital. Told them that his father had died. Answered their questions.

Step two. He waited. And then waited a little more, because they were overworked and overburdened and a man who was already dead was...well, he wasn’t the highest on their priority lists at a time when there were hundreds of cars on the roads.

Step three. He watched as people arrived. Answered more questions. Watched them open the door. Looked away as they gave his father a once over, just to check that he really was dead. Watched him get taken away, and tried not to cry, because his father was ill and he knew this was coming and-

He cried anyway once his father was well and truly gone. Because why would he hold it in? What would be the point in that? His father was  _ dead, _ and Felix had so many more things to say to him. His father had so many more things to see. It was a waste, and a shame, and there were so many things that Felix wished had happened and hadn’t happened and crying was fine. Crying about it was completely fine.

He called Ashe. Well, he didn’t call Ashe - he sent a quick text as warning that he was going to call, and then Ashe called him himself to prevent him from backing out. “Felix, I am so sorry,” Ashe said.

Felix sucked in a short breath. “It’s okay,” he said, by instinct more than anything. “I’ll be okay.” He wasn’t okay. This wasn’t okay. And he didn’t know if he was going to be okay.

“You do not get to say that you’re fine,” Ashe said firmly.

“I’m fine-”

“Felix Hugo Fraldarius, I have known you for over five years. You came to my graduation. You drove me to my first date. You have never once, in all that time I’ve known you, called me.”

Ashe had a point. “I’m not okay right now,” he admitted, because where else was there to hide?

“I know,” Ashe said, his voice losing its edge. “But it’s going to be okay at some point, right?” Felix didn’t say anything. “Of course it hurts right now. I mean- I don’t know how much you saw, or anything really, but whatever happened is going to hurt. That was your dad. But you’re not alone in this, okay?”

Felix let out a chuckle that sounded bitter and fake even to him. “Yeah,” he said. “My ex husband is coming over.”

The desperate note to his voice must have come through, because Ashe’s voice immediately took on a soothing tone. “Okay,” Ashe said. “That’s...fine?” Felix let out a snort. “Okay, maybe it’s not entirely fine. But what I meant is that I’m here for you, and the others are here for you too. I’m going to tell them about your dad when I get off this call, if you want me to.”

Felix thought of all the people he was going to have to explain this to over the next few days. “Yeah, that could help,” he said. “Thanks, Ashe.”

“No problem,” Ashe said, that little warm smile entering his tone. “And with your ex...that’ll be okay too. It might be the tiniest bit of a disaster, but that’s because of what’s just happened. It has nothing to do with who he is,  _ or  _ who you are.”

Ashe was probably right. After all, Felix was a disaster when the paramedics came too. He wasn’t just feeling like this because it was Dimitri- though that really didn’t help. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m going to hang up now. Thanks for this.”

“It’s no problem, Felix,” Ashe said. “I’ll text you later, okay? You can tell me how it goes.” Felix nodded and hung up.

And then it hit him. He’d called Dimitri before anyone else. The realisation didn’t help the feeling of mounting dread or the heavy pile of shame stacking up on his shoulders.

Fortunately, Dimitri didn’t give Felix too long to stew in his thoughts. Felix knew it was him the moment he knocked on the door; Dimitri always knocked four times in a specific rhythm, and always had. Felix bolted to the door, knowing that he couldn’t hesitate.

When he opened it, Felix blinked. He hadn’t seen Dimitri in years, and he looked- harried. Upset. As he stood in the doorway, he ran a hand through his hair - longer, better kept, tied up in a ponytail. He’d ditched the eyepatch, and the soft silver of the scar tissue that once only Felix got to see on Dimitri’s best days was bared for the whole world to observe. “Felix,” Dimitri said.

Felix opened the door a little wider and stepped aside for Dimitri to enter. His words stuck in his throat. “Dimitri,” he managed. He nearly told Dimitri to take off his shoes; fortunately, Dimitri moved to do so before he could embarrass himself.

Felix closed the door, and they stood in silence for a moment, just watching each other. “Do you...want a hug?” Dimitri asked.

Felix stiffened. He couldn’t think of anything worse right now. “No,” he said.

Dimitri took a step back and nodded. “Of course,” he said. “Is there anything else I can do?”

* * *

The day after Felix’s twenty first birthday party, Dimitri followed him around the house all evening. First when he got back from the party, then when Felix cooked some dinner, then after dinner. All Felix wanted to do was be alone. “You’ve been so down all night,” Dimitri noted, when they sat on the sofa together. Dimitri was a tiny bit closer than Felix wanted him to be, and it made his skin crawl.

“I’m fine,” he practically snapped. At the time, he hadn’t wanted to admit that he was crabby. In hindsight, he probably felt like shit because family were there, and someone mentioned their grandchildren and how wonderful they were, and Rodrigue had looked at him with so much hope in his eyes-

It was in the past now. What mattered was that… “I know that’s not true,” Dimitri said, a softness in his voice that Felix found hard to resist. Even when he knew he was right and Dimitri was wrong, there was something in that tone that made him fold. “Can I hug you? I think you’ll feel better.”

Felix did not want to be hugged. He wanted to be alone. “Fine,” he said, and let Dimitri wrap his warm arms around him, press his warm body against him, and hold him close. Stiflingly close.

He did not feel better in the embrace. But Dimitri didn’t tend to take no as a serious answer, not when Felix didn’t feel like he had a good reason to refuse. It was just a hug, after all, and they were engaged. If Dimitri couldn’t give him physical comfort, who could?

* * *

Felix blinked, surprised but not at all disappointed. A moment passed, and he remembered why Dimitri was here. “Why don’t we go and sit down?” he suggested.

They both avoided the spot where Rodrigue always sat on the sofa. There was a moment, just a moment, when Felix realised that Dimitri was going for the same spot he’d always taken in the last couple of days. A pause. Felix went to sit in a different chair. “There’s a lot to talk through,” he said.

Dimitri nodded. He twisted his hands over each other. “Before we think about that, can I- can I get your permission to see him?” he asked. “Just one last time, before a funeral.”

Felix didn’t know how he’d forgotten about it. “Of course,” he said. “It doesn’t need to be the  _ last _ time though, there’s always-”

“The funeral,” Dimitri finished, and Felix tried not to narrow his eyes. “Yes, there is. Do you...do you think Rodrigue would have wanted it to be an open casket?”

“He doesn’t look bad,” Felix said. “He just…” He tried to dredge up the paramedics’ words, the ones that slipped between the gaps of everything that was going on. They thought he’d just had a heart attack in his sleep. Ironic, considering every other health condition had nothing to do with his heart, but with so much medication these things sometimes just happened.

‘Tragic’ was what the paramedic called it. Unavoidable, and without symptoms. Without leaving a trace. It was unlikely that he even felt it. “So he might have wanted it,” Dimitri said, bringing him back to the present.

“He was never ashamed of the way he looked,” Felix said. Even when he’d been desperately ill, he never cared if others looked at him. He wasn’t a man who was easily embarrassed; he was too proud of the way he conducted himself for that. “He’d want people to be able to see him one last time. Even if they hadn’t seen him in a long time.”

“Indeed,” Dimitri said. There was something on his mind, something Felix couldn’t predict and wasn’t inclined to ask after. “How far do you want to cast the net on this? Who would you invite?”

Felix faltered. He didn’t really know - he’d been away for so long, he didn’t know who was still close to his father or who would want to come. Only his father could really know who would want to say goodbye. “I don’t know,” he said.

Dimitri nodded, a small look of surprise on his face. Felix didn’t know why that was. “I would say that anyone who knew and loved Rodrigue should be invited,” he explained. “If they don’t want to come, I imagine they just won’t.”

Felix nodded, but an issue still remained. “I wouldn’t know who that would be or how to contact them,” he said with a grimace.

“Oh, that’s simple enough,” Dimitri said, and his gaze met Felix’s just for a moment. Felix pulled his eyes away, and Dimitri continued. “Rodrigue has an address book which should have phone numbers or email addresses for those he knew. I could help you with some of that, and you’ll need to keep an eye on his emails and his phone too.”

That all made sense. So he could invite people, but… “How do I do everything else?” he asked. “Planning a funeral, executing the will.” Logically he should know all this, or at least be able to look it up, but he’d never done it before and it felt like his brain had been replaced with fog.

Dimitri looked down at his hands. “You’ll need to call his life insurance,” he began, counting through the process on his fingers, “and then the lawyer in charge of his will, and then the funeral company. From there, you get a better idea of how things will shape up.”

“You’re very good at this,” he said, not really thinking about it. It was only when the words left his mouth that he realised it might have sounded like a compliment, and it was the worst compliment ever. Should he care? He didn’t know.

And Dimitri, despite his clear exhaustion...chuckled. “I’m very used to it,” he said. Felix could only watch, slightly dumbfounded.

* * *

They’d been married for two weeks when Felix’s grandmother died. Felix hadn’t been close to her, and neither had Dimitri; she didn’t live in Faerghus and didn’t travel much; she hadn’t even come to the wedding.

Dimitri shut down. He’d met her a grand total of five times, if that. There was no reason Felix could see that he would be quite so upset, and yet-

“What do you mean, you won’t come?” he demanded. His voice went a little higher than it should have, perhaps, but he was beyond caring all that much. His grandmother had just  _ died _ and Dimitri was the one who was upset.

“I’m sorry,” Dimitri said, his voice decidedly small. “It’s a difficult space to be in, and I’d rather avoid it. If you don’t mind.”

Felix very nearly exploded. “I attended all the funerals for  _ your _ family,” he asked. Including after Glenn died, and he was sick to death of funerals and memorials and remembering people that were lost in general. “Why can’t you do the same for me?”

Dimitri shrank into himself, and Felix remembered feeling bad. He didn’t remember if he comforted Dimitri, or told him it was okay to feel like that; what he did know was that Dimitri attended the funeral in the end.

* * *

When Dimitri left, Felix sat down on the sofa in the living room and attempted to process something, anything.

The semblance of a collected state of mind that he’d managed to summon up when Dimitri was there collapsed underneath him, and he was suddenly on the top of a very tall tower, creaking in the wind.

The house felt very, very empty. Felix had been alone in it before, of course, but this was different somehow. There was meant to be someone else here. This wasn’t the place he lived anymore, he was just a guest, but now- now he was alone. No one around. No one to tell him where to go from here.

His thoughts kept going back to the same thing, unbidden: Dimitri was different in almost every way. He seemed so much more- there was something more to him. That was it. Felix still recognised his every movement, could map the progression of his words and the rise and fall of his tone. He knew Dimitri back to front, except everything had changed at the same time.

It was almost unnerving. He was the same, but different. Was that how Felix seemed to him? Or was he imagining it, and Dimitri was the same but  _ he  _ was different?

It didn’t help to have Dimitri on his mind on top of everything else. So he tried to keep his thoughts away from him and fixed firmly on the things that were to come. He needed all his attention on that anyway; it wasn’t going to be easy.

He was right - it wasn’t. There was a whole pile of emails Felix wrote, and hours upon hours of teary conversations held over the phone. There were so many people that Felix had to contact; some of them he recognised, some of them he didn’t. Some didn’t believe him when he told them his father was dead.

Those were the worst ones, because a lot of the time they put the phone down and refused to pick up again. Someone replied to his email saying that if he contacted them again, they’d report him to the police. Those were the people who probably needed the service more than most, to process what had happened.

But there was nothing he could do about how they felt, so Felix just tried to move forwards. There were things to plan and arrange and work through, and even more things that threatened him with their importance beyond the next few weeks. All of the preparation led up to a point, but there was so much more beyond that.

At least, for everyone but his father.

The day of the funeral dawned cloudy and bright. It wasn’t warm or cold, and the sky wasn’t blue, and the sun didn’t really shine. There was no real threat of rain, but it felt miserable anyway.

Felix couldn’t help but be glad; for a week now, he’d been plagued with nightmares of standing in a graveyard with his feet half frozen, just as he had when Glenn died. It was better this way, at least.

He arrived first, long before anything was due to start, and stood at the gate into the churchyard. His shoes, brand new, pinched his toes a little. He shifted restlessly from one foot to another, staring at the top of the road. Every time a car arrived, he stood to attention; every time, they pulled over to the neighbouring community centre.

Eventually, people started to arrive. Felix was, for once, happy that he wasn’t the most expressive person alive - it made it easy to feign muted gratitude for everyone who showed up. There were people Felix had never seen before in his life, but also plenty he recognised: an old schoolteacher, one of his father’s friends, a third cousin who still lived in the area.

Ingrid. Sylvain. Dimitri.

Ingrid wore a black dress, her hair pinned up off her face. She shot Felix a small smile as she passed him on the way into the church, hesitated, and continued. Sylvain passed soon after, in an impeccably cut suit and half a smile that couldn’t possibly be genuine. He mouthed ‘we’ll talk later’ as he made his way inside.

Dimitri was the only one to stop. “Good morning, Felix,” he said, a decidedly sombre look on his face. He was also dressed in a black suit, slightly less smart than Sylvain’s but not as shabby as Felix was used to seeing from him. It fit properly, and Felix did not want to think about why he was looking at the slope of Dimitri’s shoulders. Especially not at his father’s funeral.

“Morning,” he said. “Feel free to take a seat inside. We can talk properly a little later, I’m not really…”

Dimitri nodded, cutting off his fumbling before it could get too bad. “Of course,” he said, making a move again. “I understand. I’ll see you later.”

The service was- more difficult than Felix expected. He knew it would be rough, because he’d experienced enough funerals to know that they were absolutely shit, but he hadn’t expected to feel like this.

He wasn’t much of a crier, not in public. But there was a lump in his throat as one of his father’s long time friends spoke about his kindness, gentleness. Someone spoke of Lambert, and the way he and Rodrigue were probably causing plenty of chaos wherever they were now.

It was meant to make people smile, but Felix didn’t find much comfort in it. What about all the real, living people his father had left behind?

Felix felt a little as if he’d been hollowed out. When the priest moved on to the final words of the service, and spoke of all the people his father left behind…

“Rodrigue was a cherished brother, father, and friend. He leaves behind only one son, Felix, but many loving friends and a network of family he built up around him.” Dimitri’s name was mentioned at some point in a list of those particularly close to his father. Felix didn’t remember telling the priest to say that, but he must have.

Everyone stood together at the edge of the churchyard as the casket was carried away. Felix stood at the head of the group, alone, but was soon joined by Dimitri, Ingrid, and Sylvain. He didn’t know if he wanted them there, but he didn’t want them to go away either.

For some reason, they stuck to him like glue as the wake began. He was glad for it, almost, because he didn’t exactly feel chatty. It felt like there was the tiniest bit of distance between him and everyone around him; just enough to give him the pervasive feeling that he shouldn’t be there at all.

Everyone spoke so often about how much they loved his father. How much light he brought into their world, how he was such a good person. There were people who he went to school with, who wanted to talk about all his antics with the man always at his side (or, the man whose side he was always at).

Dimitri fielded the responses to all of those. “Yes, my father and Rodrigue were very close,” he said, time and time again. If Felix didn’t already have his voice memorised, he would have that phrase imprinted in his mind by now. “I cherish the memories I have of the pair of them.”

There were also people who knew his father more recently. “I met him at a swimming group,” one older woman explained, her fingers clasped around Felix’s hand. Felix was pretty sure that she’d blow away if he didn’t hold on to her, and they were inside. “Did the priest say you were his son?”

“Yes,” Felix said with a nod. The woman smiled, understanding dawning on her face.

“I’ve heard a lot about you,” she said, a hint of mischief entering her voice. She moved on to the pastries little more than a moment later.

“Did you say  _ son?” _ Someone else asked. Felix looked up and saw someone he vaguely recognised, but he didn’t know from where. Somewhere far away, he felt like some alarm bells were going off. He could see where this was going.

“Yes,” he said again. “I’m Felix, my father’s second son.”

The man frowned, coming a little closer and squinting at him. “I thought Rodrigue only had one son, and he…”

“My older brother died many years ago,” Felix explained. Please, Goddess, he did not want to have this kind of conversation right now. He shot a look at Sylvain, but he didn’t know if the message got across.

“Ah, of course!” the man said, backing away again. “My apologies. It’s been a long time, Felix.”

As he wandered away again, Sylvain let out a quiet scoff. “It must have been a long time,” he said. “Rodrigue talked about you all the time.”

Felix nodded numbly. Everything felt numb, actually. Comments like that- and it wasn’t the only one that day- just made him feel ever more out of place. This was the past, and he didn’t want to live in it. 

But here he was. No one here had spent more than an hour in the same place as him in the last five years, and he didn’t fit. Fhirdiad was a complex machine, full of interlocking pieces, and while Felix had been away his piece had worn down at the edges. They all brushed against him, but the mechanism no longer turned with him. Just around him.

Finally, the wake ended, and Felix got some time to himself. Dimitri was the last to leave, but Felix couldn’t pretend he processed the words that were spoken to him in farewell - something about calling, something about support; the usual. He’d heard them a hundred times that day, that week.

The house was empty when he returned. It wasn’t surprising, but it wasn’t comfortable either. He tried to make himself busy, moving from room to room, but he…

Everything felt so empty. He didn’t feel like he was actually touching any of the things around him, just walking around. Were his feet even touching the floor? He opened his mouth but no sound came out. He couldn’t scream. He couldn’t cry.

He blinked, and he was lying on the bed. He couldn’t remember climbing the stairs.

He closed his eyes. He didn’t think there was anything he could do to make himself feel better anyway, so he may as well try and get some rest.

When he woke, Felix didn’t feel any better. He managed to get out of bed, but it was a close run thing. He stopped short when he got to getting dressed - he’d long since run out of clean clothes and he really didn’t have anything passable right now. Especially not as he’d fallen asleep in the suit.

From there, his mood went downhill. He had so much to do: packing things, sorting out other things, contacting people who couldn’t make it to the funeral. On top of that, he had to look after himself, and he…

He didn’t have the energy. He knew that he needed to, and knew that there was a kind of urgency to grocery shopping now there was no longer much food in the house, but even thinking made his head ache just a little and he didn’t fancy doing anything much more taxing than that.

As if that wasn’t enough, every step was a reminder of who he’d once been. The person who lived in this house, miserable and lonely with only a handful of friends he didn’t really communicate with for company. He could see all the utensils he used to cook himself a meal when he stayed up late studying. There were still cake cases patterned with pink flowers that he used with Glenn.

There were photos on the walls - not many of them held images of Felix, because his father understood well enough that there were plenty of pictures that didn’t show Felix in the way he wanted to be seen, but there were enough that he could stare at a happier person and wonder where it all went. Enough that he could make himself feel bad wandering between them all and see his father  _ smiling. _

Felix could practically feel himself sliding closer and closer towards a crisis. He knew what was happening, and he knew it was bad, but he was hundreds of miles away from anyone who cared or anyone who could actually do something. It would be so easy to just put everything off a little longer until he felt better, but-

No. No, he had to reach out. He had to be  _ better _ than this. Being back here made him feel like he had to be a certain kind of person and do a certain set of actions, but he didn’t. He could be more.

And with that, well, there was an option that presented itself so easily. His father’s phone was always in a spot he could easily grab it from in case it rang, so making his way over to it was easy. Opening it was easy. Opening the contacts, scrolling down to D and copying a certain number over...

It was as easy as anything. Felix took a deep breath to steel himself and took the plunge.

‘It’s Felix,’ he started, erased it once, and then put it back. ‘I think it would be good for me to get out of the house for a bit, away from the memories.’ He hesitated over writing ‘ghosts’ and decided that it maybe wasn’t the best word. ‘Is it okay if I impose on you for a couple of nights?’

The response was almost immediate. ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘I can come to pick you up whenever you’d like.’

‘How about half an hour?’ Felix suggested. The reply he received was in the affirmative, so he pulled himself up off the sofa and got to packing.

Half way through shoving a few sets of clothes into a large backpack, Felix realised his mistake. He’d just asked Dimitri if he could stay without even knowing what Dimitri was  _ doing _ now. Dimitri could be married. Dimitri could have children. Felix’s presence would be an imposition at best and downright rude at worst, and-

Thankfully, Felix managed to catch himself halfway through his spiral. Internally, he chastised himself for letting his thoughts go that far; Dimitri would (or should, at least) have said something if there was an issue with him staying. As it was, he hadn’t, so it was probably fine.

The knock on the door came almost exactly thirty minutes after the text was sent; knowing Dimitri, he’d probably timed it exactly and maybe even waited at the bottom of the drive before pulling in so Felix wouldn’t feel hurried. That was just the kind of person he was.

Felix opened it after only a moment (he was waiting in the living room, sat on the edge of his seat, knowing that he’d be able to get away soon). Dimitri looked a little concerned, but he offered a smile. “Would you like me to come in?” he asked, looking nervously over Felix’s shoulder.

Felix shook his head. “No, you don’t need to,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong, other than the wallpaper in the downstairs bathroom.” Dimitri fixed him with a quizzical look. “It’s hideous,” he explained.

Dimitri let out a weak chuckle and turned back to the car. “It isn’t fantastic,” he agreed, opening one of the back doors for Felix to put his bag down. Mentally, Felix noted that there were no baby seats or anything. So far so good for the ‘not imposing on Dimitri’s potential family life’ thing.

Still, the thought gnawed at him when Dimitri pulled out of the drive and took them away from the house. Even as Felix was able to relax a little, the concern still wore away at him, until he had to ask. “You’re fine with me staying, right? It isn’t a bother?”

Dimitri looked at him again with an undecipherable expression that was faintly familiar. “No,” he said. There was a note to his voice Felix couldn’t quite understand. “My flat isn’t large by any means, but there’s a small guest bedroom and no one to sleep there bar the cats.”

Felix couldn’t help it. He  _ knew _ his eyebrows would shoot up at the mere mention of cats, and he could tell from Dimitri’s expression that he’d noticed his excitement. To Felix’s dismay, he didn’t say anything, so he had to take matters into his own hands. “You have cats?”

“Yes!” Dimitri said, his eye brightening. “Three. There’s Loog and Kyphon, they’re a, uh, they’re very fond of each other.” His cheeks went slightly pink. “And then there’s...Floofle.”

“Floofle?” Felix asked, unable to stop the snort that left his nose. Dimitri flushed even pinker.

“I didn’t name her,” he said, fixing his eye firmly on the road ahead of him. “The shelter did. And after I went to all the trouble of teaching Loog and Kyphon their new names, I didn’t want to go through the ordeal again.”

Watching him speak, Felix couldn’t help but notice properly for the first time just how much...better Dimitri looked. Sure, he’d noticed the difference, the maturity, but seeing Dimitri smile, seeing him gush- it was something else entirely. There was a warmth to his expression, and his cheeks were rounder than before. Fuller. His hair shone in the late morning sunshine, and something about it looked a little like-

Felix brought his thought process screeching to a stop right there. He knew he was getting into dangerous territory that he absolutely could not afford to be in. Not right now. There were lots of emotions he should not even attempt to deal with for at least the next few days. Preferably months. Or years. Years would be good.

Dimitri kept chatting away about cats and cats and more about cats as they drove the rest of the way to his flat. Unsurprisingly, it was different to the house Felix moved out of years ago - that had been too big for two, let alone one.

Dimitri clicked his tongue when he opened the door. “Come inside quickly,” he said, his voice carrying a note of amusement as he spoke above the sound of distant meowing. “Or they’ll dart for the door.”

Felix stepped inside, trying not to obviously look around. He kicked his shoes off and was almost immediately overrun by the two cats who came to say hello. “Are they friendly?” he asked, bending down the moment Dimitri nodded.

One of the cats butted their head against Felix’s hand. “That’s Loog,” Dimitri said, “and the grey one is Kyphon. The tabby is Floofle.” She was indeed pretty fluffy; she came to rub her body against Felix’s legs, successfully getting her fur all over his admittedly already untidy trousers.

“They clearly like you,” Felix said, watching as Dimitri swept Loog off the ground without any sign of protest from the cat.

“They like you too,” Dimitri said. There was a smile in his voice that Felix didn’t dare look at, keeping his eyes fixed on the cat in front of him. Avoiding his feelings looked like it was going to be difficult.

For most of the afternoon Dimitri left Felix alone in the guest bedroom with the cats. He was working, and logically Felix knew he should try and get a handful of things done too, but he also knew he was exhausted. If these three cats wanted to demand his attention for the next several hours, that was fine. It was just an unfortunate consequence that meant he couldn’t do anything else if he gave them the attention they deserved.

In the early evening, Dimitri stuck his head round the door. There was a small smile on his face, and Felix abruptly moved to sit up and dislodge at least one of the cats that had settled down for a nap somewhere on his body. “Did you need something?”

“Nothing pressing,” Dimitri said. “I just wanted to ask you what you wanted for dinner? I was going to cook now.”

“There’s food in the fridge?” In the past, they had both been utterly hopeless at making sure there was enough to eat. They were both too scatterbrained, or presumed the other had taken care of it.

Dimitri chuckled and nodded. “If you don’t have a preference beyond food, I’ll get something going now.”

“Not on your own you won’t,” Felix said, regretfully plucking Floofle from where she’d settled down on his stomach and moving to stand. He would not be an ungrateful guest.

Dimitri fixed him with another funny look but didn’t object, directing Felix towards some meat that needed to be cut up once they reached the kitchen. As the meal came together, piece by piece, Felix became uncomfortably aware of how small the kitchen was. With every other step, he found himself brushing up against Dimitri somehow.

It wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly, but  _ that _ was what was uncomfortable. Felix was doing his best not to think about all the things about Dimitri that still made so much sense, and he failed more often than he wanted to admit.

They ate in silence for a few minutes, both of them enjoying the (admittedly pretty good) meal they’d managed to throw together. Dimitri looked nervous, though, and after a while of Felix stubbornly not breaking the silence he opened his mouth. “I thought I’d say that, ah, I’m happy for you to stay as long as you need,” Dimitri said.

“Thanks,” Felix replied around a mouthful of food.  _ Yes _ he knew it was bad manners, yes he still did it. It wasn’t like Dimitri was looking at his mouth. “I’ll only be staying for a few days, though.” Better to set up some boundaries and expectations first. He didn’t want Dimitri getting any ideas. “I just needed to get out of the house. It stopped me from getting in the mindset I needed.”

Something akin to understanding dawned on Dimitri’s face, and Felix felt something give inside him. “I understand,” he said, fiddling a little with his food with the end of his fork. “This is my second new flat in five years.”

Ohhh. That made sense. Dimitri’s ready acceptance of Felix coming into his home, the frequent offers of support… There were words on the tip of Felix’s tongue, but they sounded cruel even in his mind. He couldn’t tease Dimitri over something like this.

_ Not yet, _ his mind supplied, and Felix desperately tried to return his attention to his food. It was only when Dimitri opened his mouth to speak again that he realised he hadn’t replied out loud.

“You seem to be doing better,” Dimitri said, his voice dripping with the kind of politeness Felix had only ever heard from Dimitri or Flayn. “Despite the circumstances. I-if you don’t mind me saying that, that is.”

There was a moment between them. Silence, Dimitri’s mouth tensed in something ready to tip over into an apology. Felix, knowing exactly what Dimitri expected to happen, knowing that he wasn’t that person anymore.

_ Better. _ As if nothing had changed beyond Felix getting a haircut, or as if the difference was as simple as a shave. Better, because Dimitri wasn’t just commenting on the way he looked but also on...everything. It made Felix want to snap at him, ask him why he felt the need to comment on it at all.

Felix opened his mouth. The feeling dissipated. “They’re not great circumstances,” he agreed. “But in general, yes, I probably look better now I’m actually myself.”

In reply, Dimitri nodded. There was a small, half-smile on his face as his gaze returned to his plate, and Felix couldn’t help but stare at it.

Oh no. He was still beautiful.

* * *

The next day, Felix felt less like his mind was soup full of sharks. He spent the morning on his laptop, sorting through the reams of things he needed to do; emails to be replied to, rooms to sort out, futures to decide. Ashes to scatter.

It was easy to get lost in the work, and before he knew it, Dimitri knocked on the door. “Come on in,” Felix called back, as if this wasn’t Dimitri’s flat and Dimitri’s spare bedroom. As if he belonged here.

Dimitri’s head appeared round the side of the door, accompanied by Loog wriggling through the gap and jumping straight up onto Felix’s lap. He ran his hand down the cat’s fur to appease him and looked up at Dimitri. He was staring.

“Did you want something?” Felix asked.

Dimitri blinked. “Oh, yes!” he said, and Felix ignored the pink dusting his cheeks as he replied. “I was just here to remind you that you needed to eat. It’s nearly two.”

* * *

They were both twenty three. “You need to take better care of yourself,” Felix snapped, practically throwing the cereal bar at Dimitri’s head. The side he could see, because he wasn’t cruel. Just concerned.

“You need to take better care of yourself too,” Dimitri shot back, as if that was at all relevant. Felix felt something bitter rise in his chest.

“That’s  _ not _ the matter at hand,” he said. “I want you to be better at this. That’s what I’m asking; nothing else.” Dimitri had made a good point, though, and Felix’s mind scrabbled around for a passable retort. Anything to get Dimitri to just...just sort himself out. “Besides, you’re far worse. You must have been up until four this morning.”

How tired Dimitri looked when he glanced up to reply didn’t help his case particularly. “You  _ always _ forget to eat,” he said, though Felix noted with a small sense of relief that he picked up the cereal bar and unwrapped it. Good. “And if you go to work without lunch you tend to skip it.”

Felix thought, briefly, about the way he looked disgusting in the mirror in a way he couldn’t quite pin down. Dimitri had a point, but he couldn’t- “What about when you were at university?” he asked, and Dimitri slumped in his seat a little. “When you didn’t eat anything solid for days on end, and you didn’t really sleep either.”

“I was in a bad place,” Dimitri replied, something terse in his voice. “Besides, you were the one who stayed up and talked me through it the night before one of your exams. You nearly failed it, and all for-”

“For you,” Felix replied, and Dimitri let out a stuttering sigh. Something went unspoken, but neither of them really knew what. All that mattered was that nothing else was said aloud, and that meant nothing cruel had to be said in response.

* * *

“Oh, that would be a good idea,” Felix said, moving to stand from his seat. Loog complained, but he’d have to suck it up - Felix found he was actually quite hungry now Dimitri had reminded him that he did, in fact, need to eat.

It didn’t take long for Dimitri to throw some food together, and within a few minutes they were sitting at the table again, plates in front of them. For a short while, they ate in silence, ignoring the awkwardness between them. Or trying to, anyway.

“Do you remember back at university?” Dimitri asked, eventually breaking the silence. There were lots of things that happened back at university, but anything to do with eating could never really be a good memory.

Felix was almost tempted to ask him not to bring it up, but… He couldn’t think of a good enough reason. “Which part of it?” he asked.

“When I was-” Dimitri gestured at the wall with his fork, and a small flake of tuna fell to the floor. Floofle had snaffled it up before either of them could react. “You know how I got when I was doing badly. When you had to watch me constantly, and did all the cooking and shopping to make sure I ate enough, and then…”

“I passed out in one of my classes from exhaustion,” Felix finished. He was pretty sure that was the time Dimitri was referring to - though it wasn’t the only time he’d looked after him, back then. He didn’t know why Dimitri mentioned it; it wasn’t a good memory, nor was it particularly flattering for either of them.

Dimitri used to carry a weariness with him whenever something like that was mentioned. But now he chuckled, and continued. “We were both hopeless,” he said.

Felix nodded. “We were idiots back then, weren’t we?” Why was he reminiscing with Dimitri? Why, when they’d barely been in the same place for a day? Why did it feel  _ easy? _ “We weren’t helping anyone with the way we acted. Especially not ourselves.”

Dimitri hummed. “We really weren’t,” he agreed. “But still...we managed, in the end. We made it through alive. When I think back on how I acted and felt, I think that’s just about good enough.”

Honestly, Felix felt just the tiniest bit unnerved by how he’d thought pretty much the same thing a few times himself in the past few years. “I think I still have some room to improve,” he admitted, though he didn’t know why he would admit that to Dimitri. “I still need reminding to take care of myself sometimes, clearly.”

“I’m the same,” Dimitri said, offering Felix a smile that he returned without thinking. They settled back into a comfortable silence that had Felix’s mind rushing to a hundred things he still didn’t want to think about.

Felix hadn’t managed to get much more done by the time dinner rolled around. He’d opened six spreadsheets of various descriptions and completed two and a half tasks between them, and half written five emails, but other than that he’d been largely unsuccessful.

It must have been obvious to Dimitri that something was vaguely up. He shifted around on his seat for half the meal, clearly waiting for what he felt was the right moment to say something.

“Did you want to ask me something?” Felix asked, snapping Dimitri out of his thoughts with a start. He must have really been pondering something. “You’re on edge.”

“Oh, right,” Dimitri said. “I just wanted to ask if there was anything I could do to help you get on with everything you needed to get done. Or anything you needed, or...anything at all?”

Something inside Felix warned him to be cautious. Dimitri was too eager to please someone who was meant to be a near stranger. “I have it sorted,” he said, even though he didn’t, not really. “I just need to...work out the kinds of things I need to survive back at my fa- at the house.”

Dimitri looked at him with an expression decidedly tinged with sympathy. Felix pushed down the feeling that accompanied seeing that expression. “What’s the problem?” he asked. “I can try.”

“I planned a short trip,” he explained. “Two weeks. I’ve been here nearly a month now, and the whole house is full of things I don’t really want to use.”

“Like the spice cupboard full of twenty year old spices?” Dimitri asked, a small smile on his face. He knew, of course. He always knew the kind of person his father was (maybe better even than Felix after all the time away, his traitorous mind supplied, but he pushed the thought away).

“Exactly,” Felix agreed, even though that wasn’t the point at all and Dimitri probably knew it.

“Well,” Dimitri said, “you probably need a bunch of groceries. Rodrigue wasn’t the most varied eater, and you’ve probably run through all the things he had in the cupboards by now.” Felix nodded. “And you might need more clothes, laundry detergent, some toiletries...oh! I mean, this probably isn’t helpful, actually, never mind-”

“Tell me,” Felix said, hoping his tone didn’t come out as too demanding.

“I have a box of...some of your old things,” Dimitri said. He was right; it wasn’t helpful at all. “I didn’t want to get rid of them without asking you, so I just-”

“Kept them?” Felix finished, and then winced. His tone was too harsh there. He forced out a laugh. “Goddess, Dimitri, I don’t want those things. I can almost guarantee that.”

Dimitri nodded, shifting awkwardly on his seat again. “The offer is there,” he said. “As I said, I’d rather you check it all before it gets thrown away. If only to make sure there’s nothing precious in it that I didn’t know about.”

Honestly, Felix couldn’t think of a way that Dimitri  _ wouldn’t  _ know what could constitute something precious to him. He’d left those objects behind when Dimitri knew every other breath he took and half the thoughts he had; they’d shared most of their childhood in one way or another.

But it had been five years, and Felix couldn’t say things like that anymore. They sounded too romantic even in his head.

* * *

Within a few days, Felix felt able to go back to the house that was now sort of but never really could be his. Being back there was still overwhelming, but the time away helped - he felt like he could breathe, at least, and he went back laden with groceries and clothes Dimitri went with him to buy.

He also returned with the box of old things, because Dimitri said there was no point in him keeping it; everything in it had once belonged to Felix, after all. He emphasised that Felix could just throw it out the moment he got back if he really wanted to, but…

Felix didn’t throw it away, and he didn’t want to think about what that meant. He tried not to think about Dimitri at all, really. There were so many-

He hadn’t felt as he expected to, seeing and spending time with Dimitri again. There were so many things that just didn’t go away, apparently. Even when they were things Felix desperately  _ wanted _ to go away.

Or maybe he didn’t. He didn’t know. That was why he was trying not to think about it too hard.

The problem was, even as he managed to get his life back on track and focus firmly on the things he needed to get done, Dimitri just didn’t leave. He supposed it was natural, because Dimitri lived in Fhirdiad. But it was still damn annoying.

The first time Dimitri showed up at his door, he smiled sheepishly when Felix opened it with a half scowl. “Why are you here?” Felix asked. Rude, maybe, but that wasn’t his fault.

“I thought I’d just check on you,” Dimitri said. “See if you were okay.” After a beat of silence, he held out a covered plate. “I brought you some baking?”

Felix rolled his eyes. “What’s in it?” he asked.

“Dark chocolate and chili cookies,” Dimitri said, beaming. Damn; he’d done something he knew Felix liked, and that meant he had exactly zero good excuses to refuse it. Which also meant that he had to accept a gift from Dimitri.

“Fine,” he said, taking the plate. Dimitri looked at him with such an earnest look on his face that squeezed something in his heart and he just had to… “Thanks,” he said. Another moment of silence, and Felix moved to close the door.

His face was warm. Goddess, why was he like this.

The second time, Dimitri didn’t come with baking. He stood in the doorway, scuffing one of his toes against the stone below. It looked almost silly, considering he was a giant of a man and towered over Felix, but it was sort of cu-

Nope. Nope, he was not going to think about that.

“May I come in?” Dimitri asked. “I thought it might be- a handful of my items may be scattered in amongst everything here, I visited fairly frequently, and I wouldn’t want you to have to make a trip, or-”

“You can come in,” Felix said, opening the door a little wider. Dimitri smiled, his face as bright as always.

One thing led to another, and within an hour the pair of them sat cross legged on the floor of the attic, rifling through boxes and boxes of photo albums. “I didn’t even know my father took so many photos,” Felix said. There must have been hundreds of photos inside. Almost all of them were from before he hit twelve.

“He’s not in any of these,” Dimitri said, running his finger along the front of one. Felix looked over; him and Dimitri at the front, Sylvain and Glenn just behind them, with Ingrid jumping in at the side. They all looked so smiley.

“You can take them.” Laid out in front of him was a photo of his eighth birthday party - there were over ten children he didn’t even recognise, people who must have been in his class at school, and right by his side was Dimitri. Felix was wearing a bright purple dress which had icing all down the front of it.

Felix remembered that he spilled it on purpose, because he didn’t like the dress very much but didn’t want to admit it and upset his aunt. He didn’t remember what happened to it after that, but it probably involved crying.

“Does it hurt?” Dimitri asked.

“Does what hurt?” Everything hurt, a lot of the time. Especially now. Especially here. Especially with him.

“All of these photos. Seeing...a past you who isn’t you.”

Felix paused for a moment, looked back down at the photo, and nodded. “Well, it is me,” he said. “That’s what I looked like a long time ago.”

When he looked up, Dimitri’s eye was fixed on him with an unusual intensity. Dimitri nodded at him to continue. “But yes, they do hurt. Because it reminds me of all the things that hurt back then, and everything that- continued to hurt. For a long time.”

Dimitri nodded. He frowned, but there was something so close to understanding and  _ sympathy _ on his face that had something stirring in Felix’s chest. “It’s strange for me to see them too,” he admitted. “It was strange seeing  _ you _ a couple of weeks ago. You didn’t look like the man in my memories or my imagination.”

“Oh?” Felix asked. Dimitri looked away from him, going back to sorting through the photos in front of him. Felix’s mind caught on the comment and wouldn’t let it go. Dimitri thought about him.  _ Imagined  _ him. “Even though you didn’t see me at all when I was gone?”

Dimitri looked up again. There was a clear blush on his cheeks. “Rodrigue said you didn’t want people knowing where you were or what you were doing,” he said. Which meant Dimitri had asked, which wasn’t exactly unexpected, but… “Have you seen this one before?” Dimitri asked, his voice hurried as he shoved another photo in front of him.

* * *

“Let’s play the knight and princess game again!” Dimitri said, jumping up off the log and brandishing his stick. “I want to rescue you from the dragon, it nearly got you last time and I want to show it true fear.”

Felix scowled and stomped his foot. It hit the ground hard, jarring his ankle a little. Tears sprung to his eyes, as they always did. “I don’t  _ want _ to be the princess, Dimitri,” he said. “Why can’t you be the princess?”

“But-” Dimitri said something here that Felix’s mind now threw down on the ground and stamped on, obscuring the word for what it was - dead. “You’re a  _ girl.” _ Felix frowned. “Girls can be knights, but boys can’t be princesses.”

Felix shrugged. “Well I’ll be a knight then,” he said firmly. More tears leaked out. “And you can be a girl.”

“It doesn’t work like that, though,” Dimitri said, bending down to poke at one of the tears on Felix’s cheeks. He always did that, because Glenn and his father did it to try and get him to smile again. This time, it didn’t work.

“Well why do I have to be the girl then?” Felix mumbled. He didn’t remember if Dimitri heard, or if he replied. Whatever he said or didn’t say, it didn’t make much difference for the years of playing princess that were to come.

* * *

“Can I ask you something about what you said earlier?” Felix asked, once they’d packed all the boxes of albums away. They hadn’t actually come to a decision on what to do with them, but that had never been the purpose of the activity in the first place. Not really.

“Go ahead,” Dimitri said.

“You said I looked different to how you imagined,” he said, and Dimitri’s hands stilled. A moment later, he started fidgeting again. “What did you mean by that?”

Dimitri pursed his lips together. Felix got the feeling that whatever the answer was, he might not like it very much. “I always tried to- I knew you were doing things to make yourself look closer to the person you really were,” he explained, “so I always tried to construct an image of what that might look like in my head.”

Felix nodded, and Dimitri continued. “I used to look at pictures of Glenn a lot,” he admitted. “So I tried to imagine you still looking like you, but also like Glenn and your father. Clearly, I didn’t do a good job - you’re far more-”

He cut off, blushing. A silence passed between them, awkward and heavy with a sentiment that shouldn’t be voiced. Felix had to salvage this conversation before it went down  _ that _ route. “Did you try to imagine me with my father’s facial hair?” Maybe it was wrong to speak ill of the dead, but his father’s beard was crap.

Dimitri chuckled. “Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly why I dodged the question before. I thought that maybe you had...a moustache. Or something like that.”

Then he let out that clear, pure laugh that made something rise in Felix’s chest, and he couldn’t help but join in. Between breaths, he managed to force out a reply. “My facial hair is exactly that bad if I don’t shave.”

Dimitri let out something Felix could only really describe as a guffaw. “Mine is the same,” he said. “It’s horrendous. I don’t know how anyone copes with watching their facial hair grow in.”

The conversation between them from then was easy, light. Almost as if nothing stood between them and there was nothing behind them, but not quite. It was still- the past was still there, but now there were little bits of it out in the open it didn’t bother Felix nearly so much.

* * *

Dimitri stopped by again, naturally. This time, he brought a bag full of groceries ‘for the trouble he undoubtedly caused’ and asked if they could cook together.

It was...the kitchen in his father’s house was larger than the one in Dimitri’s flat, but Felix still found himself brushing against Dimitri more times than he probably should have. He set up his chopping board right next to where Dimitri was doing some dishes, and Dimitri drained one of the pans practically on top of Felix. Their shoulders brushed.

Their feet brushed, too, under the dining room table with their food in front of them. It was a familiar feeling - they used to do it a lot, when they were children and then when they were teenagers. Kicking each other gently under the table (sometimes with more force than necessary, back when bruised shins were trophies rather than inconvenient extra aches), catching each other’s eyes every time it happened.

And then their hands brushed later on, as they sat on the sofa in the living room and watched a film. They could have been much further apart. Maybe they should have been, but Felix wasn’t going to object if Dimitri made these decisions. As long as he wasn’t doing it himself, he could deny the way it made him feel.

Besides, Felix had other things to focus on; the film in front of him was fantastic. Every other shot, he found another little detail he liked, his eyes unable to stop following the arcs of light and movement in front of him. It was enrapturing.

“I’m surprised you liked this,” Dimitri said, once the film came to an end. He’d tried to talk briefly during it, but Felix wouldn’t let him - speaking over songs in a film was sacrilegious and absolutely ruined the mood. “You never seemed to like animated films when we were younger.”

Felix shrugged. “I was probably embarrassed,” he admitted. He didn’t remember saying he disliked them, though he wasn’t surprised that Dimitri got that impression. “I always adored them.”

Dimitri’s laugh was soft. “That’s just like you, Felix.”

Felix felt very seen. He didn’t think he disliked it all that much.

* * *

‘Pardon me for interrupting you,’ Dimitri’s text read, as if a text message on a phone Felix always had silenced was an interruption, ‘but I wanted to invite you to a small gathering this weekend. If you don’t mind, of course; Sylvain and Ingrid will be there, as well as another close friend of mine.’

Dimitri was perhaps the only person Felix had ever met who used semi colons in texts, and informed him of that. And then he stared at the rest of the text, the bit he was trying to ignore as much as he could.

A small gathering. Sylvain and Ingrid, along with someone else. A traitorous part of Felix’s mind filled in the gap there - whoever this person was had probably replaced him.

But Felix was fast realising that he still knew Dimitri, and the Dimitri he knew wouldn’t purposefully invite Felix somewhere he wasn’t welcome. Sylvain and Ingrid had been pretty friendly when they were at the wake together, and maybe- maybe seeing them would be okay.

‘Sure,’ he replied, and then regretted it. He had no idea if he was ready for something like this.

The gathering was at Dimitri’s flat, and Felix made sure to be exactly one minute early. Ingrid would arrive exactly on time - in fact, he was pretty sure he spotted her car on the other side of the road as he sat in his own, waiting for exactly the right moment to go up to the door. Sylvain would be late, naturally, and this other person...well, they were a mystery for now. Felix would find out.

As he climbed the steps up to Dimitri’s flat, his heart thundered in his chest. He knew the reason he was so nervous, of course: the last time he’d been at a gathering like this, he ended up leaving part way through because he heard the others talking about him. Something within him was convinced it would happen again.

The other part knew it was time to move on, so he rang the doorbell and hoped for the best.

“Felix!” Dimitri greeted, a bright smile on his face just as always. He was always so pleased to see him, and again that meant something that Felix didn’t know he should be thinking about. “Come on in, Dedue is already here.” Huh, Dimitri had finally found someone who was early for things. 

Within a minute of Felix settling down on one of the armchairs, the doorbell rang and Ingrid entered. From there, they all sat around making awkward small talk until Sylvain arrived; clearly, there was an understanding that he would be late and that they may as well wait until he got there to start conversations in earnest.

Still, Felix couldn’t help but feel a little as if he was the one holding things back. Ingrid kept shooting side glances at him, which Ingrid had always been wont to do, but it could mean something else as well. Felix didn’t know, and it set him on edge.

On top of that, there was the issue that things undeniably  _ had _ changed. Ingrid rose from her seat to hug Sylvain when he entered the room, and then Sylvain rounded on Dimitri, and then Dedue. He stopped slightly short of Felix and shot him a smile instead. A sheepish thumbs up. He felt out of place.

Alongside all of that, there was Dedue. Felix probably should have predicted that this mystery replacement Felix would be Dedue - Dimitri had mentioned the man once or twice, usually when food was brought up. Whoever he was to Dimitri, they were clearly very close; they sat next to each other on the sofa, and Dimitri didn’t even lean back when Dedue reached across him to grab something from the coffee table.

It wasn’t that Felix was  _ jealous, _ nothing even close to that, he just...didn’t know how he fit in. He didn’t even know Dedue, and the man had barely done more than introduce himself before the doorbell rang to herald Ingrid’s arrival.

Awkward small talk rattled on for a few minutes more before it trundled into silence, and Sylvain cleared his throat. “It’s been a while,” he said, shooting Felix a meaningful but not unkind look. His stomach flipped over anyway; he knew it had been a while. “ _ I _ think we should do a little catch up. Just so Felix knows what we’ve all been doing these past few years, you know?”

Felix didn’t- okay, he supposed he was curious, and he wasn’t just going to learn it all through osmosis. People didn’t tend to drop hints of what they’d been doing into casual conversation, so maybe it was better to get this out of the way.

Ingrid groaned and rolled her eyes. “If you’re going to force this, you get to go first,” she said.

“Sure,” Sylvain said, shooting her that very familiar grin. Felix got the impression he hadn’t changed much at all. “I always love talking about myself.”

Ingrid and Dedue scoffed in tandem, and Sylvain began. “I’ve had a wild ride these past few years,” he said, as if Felix hadn’t predicted he would say exactly that. Sylvain always emphasised just how much fun he was or wasn’t happening. “I was in and out of my boring old job, and in and out of relationships, you know me.”

Felix did indeed know Sylvain, and the words didn’t surprise him at all. “But,” and then Sylvain paused with a note of drama to his voice, “I quit. Which made my dad go ballistic, by the way. Oh, and then my brother stalked me for a bit, but he was always an asshole and he’s in prison for it now.”

Felix nodded, unsurprised, but Sylvain seemingly had even more to tell him. He puffed out his chest. “And now I’m a model!”

Felix scoffed. “That checks out,” he said. Sylvain had that kind of casual, ruffled look about him that used to border on distress but now didn’t seem to (so maybe he had changed, actually). Modelling would fit him.

Sylvain gasped, and Felix’s gaze met Ingrid’s across the room; they rolled their eyes in tandem. “You wound me, Felix,” he said. “Oh also I have a partner now - his name is Yuri, we’ve been together for three years and yes I know, me holding down a relationship, what a shocker.”

“Oh,” Felix said, letting a familiar grin widen on his face. It was almost easy to slip back into the way he used to interact with Sylvain. “You finally worked out that you’re not straight.”

Sylvain laughed, and Felix felt a slither of relief run through him. At least that was the right thing to say. “It only took me a little bit longer than you, actually.” Then, he narrowed his eyes in a way that only looked half rehearsed. “What do you mean by that anyway? You already knew?”

“Obviously,” Felix said. Dimitri was straight, obviously (probably, and Felix wasn’t going to think about it any more than he had to), Ingrid was...up in the air, and Sylvain had always gone for the no homo vibes. It was as clear as day, really - especially in hindsight. “I haven’t met Yuri, have I?”

Sylvain shook his head. “He couldn’t make it here or the funeral. He works a lot.”

Felix’s eyes were drawn to Dimitri, who nodded sagely. “Yuri works a lot and earns most of their money. Sylvain calls himself Yuri’s trophy husband.”

Sylvain spluttered, shooting a slightly betrayed look at everyone who was laughing; everyone in the room. “We’re not married,” he said, a hurried note entering his tone. “Yuri thinks that marriage is a patriarchal system engrained in capitalism, so he rejected me when I proposed.”

“Yuri’s a socialist,” Ingrid explained, in a way that reminded Felix distinctly of when he used to explain the concept of gender and sex being separate to middle aged teachers.

Two could play at that game. “You’re not?” he shot back.

Ingrid’s eyes widened, and it was Sylvain’s turn to laugh. There was a note of surprise to his expression too, though, which wasn’t really a shock to Felix. He hadn’t always been… “You never used to be,” Dimitri noted.

Felix shrugged. “I changed my mind,” he said. He’d changed a lot of things in those five years, and at some point the pressure he’d felt around his accounting coworkers, his family members, the role he’d forced himself into...somewhere, all of that had fallen away.

Sylvain laughed, and when he threw back his head, Felix caught sight of something- something unfamiliar. Something  _ genuine. _ Sylvain was happier, and it made his breath catch in his throat for a minute. He was glad to see it.

“If we’re done talking about your not-husband,” Ingrid said with a smile, “I can go next.”

“Aww, Ingrid, I thought you thought this was stupid?” Sylvain asked. Ingrid shot him a glare.

“I do. But  _ someone _ hasn’t been around for a few years, and I think he needs to be brought up to speed.” She made eye contact with Sylvain, and Sylvain’s mouth fell open. Felix squinted at them. “I didn’t make dramatic changes like Sylvain or anything like that,” she admitted.

“That’s not a bad thing,” Dedue chipped in, and Ingrid nodded.

“Not everyone has to,” she agreed. “I stayed in my job and I do a lot of the same stuff, honestly. I took a few years out for some-” she cleared her throat- “personal development.”

“She’s a lesbian now,” Sylvain explained. Ahh, that made sense.

Ingrid let out an indignant sound, but the blush on her cheeks told Felix that Sylvain had said exactly what Ingrid was skirting around. “Sylvain is correct,” he said, her voice sounding just a little tight. “I haven’t had luck with dating, unlike some people, but it’s...I’m having a good time.”

“You forgot the other big thing,” Dimitri said, sitting a little closer to the edge of his seat. It looked like he was having fun, almost, and a spark lit in Felix’s heart.

Ingrid laughed, and that too sounded so much easier than Felix remembered. “I cut my father off last year,” she said. “Because I hated him. There wasn’t really much point sticking around.”

“Did anyone like him?” Felix asked. Ingrid shot him a dirty look, but she didn’t actually criticise his words.

“Anyway, I’m done,” Ingrid said. “Dedue?”

“I can’t exactly update Felix on my past five years, he didn’t know me before,” Dedue said, a small frown gracing his face.

“Nonsense, Dedue!” Dimitri replied. “You’re here, and  _ I’d  _ like for you and Felix to know each other.”

Dedue nodded. “I can introduce myself, then,” he said, turning fully towards Felix. “As you already know, I’m Dedue. I own a cafe in Fhirdiad, and I met Dimitri a few years ago.”

Sylvain started chuckling, garnering himself a foul glance from Dedue; as foul as Dedue’s clearly very gentle disposition allowed, anyway. “Dedue and Dimitri met on a dating app.”

There was a moment when Felix’s stomach plunged for a reason he couldn’t quite fathom. He shouldn’t be bothered by the mention of Dimitri dating. He definitely shouldn’t be bothered by the fact that Dimitri and Dedue weren’t currently dating, but had apparently just met in that context in the past. And yet, there was still that feeling in his chest. An ugly feeling.

Completely blind to his discomfort, Dimitri blushed a bright pink colour. “Sylvain!” he said, his voice full of something Felix would describe as indignation. “I don’t want to talk to Felix about dating.”

Felix blinked, his mouth feeling suddenly dry. “Dimitri, we’re not married,” he said. He hated how the words tasted like ash on his tongue. He kept the  _ anymore _ to himself; everyone knew. “You’re allowed to date people. And talk about it.”

“I agree,” Dedue said, shooting Felix with a look he couldn’t understand. “Dimitri and I did meet on a dating app; we went on a date, realised we got along very well but weren’t actually attracted to each other, and took it from there. There’s not much more to say”

“You hardly said  _ anything  _ about yourself, Dedue,” Dimitri said, and he definitely sounded indignant there. Dedue sat back in his seat, a small exasperated smile on his face, and let Dimitri continue. “Dedue is a wonderful person, though he’d never say it,” he explained. “He’s kind and an incredibly talented chef - you should go to his cafe some time, though you might have to queue to get in.”

Dedue looked down, fiddling with his hands. “It’s really not all that impressive,” he said. “But it would be good to see you.”

Felix didn’t really know Dedue, but he could see them getting along. He seemed like a no nonsense kind of man.

“Should I go next?” Dimitri asked. Something like a stone sank in Felix’s stomach; he didn’t know if he wanted to hear this. He much preferred picking up with Dimitri like almost nothing had happened. “I’ll be honest and say I struggled a bit in...ah, putting my life together after you left Faerghus.” He chuckled, but his voice held something raw that Felix didn’t like at all.

“I had to teach him how to do laundry,” Ingrid explained. Felix groaned. He wasn’t surprised, exactly, but- actually, no, he just wasn’t surprised. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Dimitri do laundry. It was no wonder he didn’t know how.

“I tried to get it together, but it was hard, and- actually, I’d rather not talk about this.” He coughed, went to take a sip of his water, and Dedue put a hand on his shoulder. “I do a lot of things you wouldn’t be familiar with now, though. I’m a teacher in one of the local schools, all the students think I’m very cool.”

“They think you’re cool?” Felix asked, disbelief in his voice. Dimitri was, quite honestly, the opposite of cool.

“Of course they do!” Dimitri answered, a bright, mischievous note in his voice. “I have one eye. They love it.”

“Sure they do.” Felix’s gaze met Dimitri’s accidentally, and he swallowed. The conversation paused, Dimitri leaving his statement unanswered, and Sylvain had to restart on something else. Felix felt profoundly awkward.

“Go on, Felix!” Sylvain said, looking almost desperately between them. “Tell us about what you’ve been doing. I’m dying to know, what with you sitting there all mysteriously.”

“I moved to Enbarr,” he said with a shrug. He didn’t really know how to tell this - he’d never really tried to explain it to anyone before. The people he’d spoken to before this were either there with him in these past few years or were his father, who’d heard about it all as it happened. “I did a new degree. In history, this time.”

“I never did think accounting suited you,” Ingrid said.

“That’s because I hated it,” Felix said with a scoff. Sometimes, he wondered how he’d managed it at all, back then. “Once I was done with the degree, I accidentally helped start an online education project with some of the people I lived with.”

“What kind of thing?” Dimitri asked, leaning forwards in his seat again. In the low light, his eye almost...sparkled.

“We call it an accessible education project,” Felix explained. This was a ‘talking about himself’ thing he could do. He’d pitched it to so many people. “We write articles and produce videos that are all free to access, and they’re meant to be simply written but hold up to scrutiny.”

“Oh!” Dimitri said, understanding dawning on his face. “Like the access to education website?”

Felix blinked. “That’s it,” he said.

Dimitri stilled. “You work on that?” He sounded genuinely confused, as if Felix hadn’t appeared in tens of videos by now and been credited in hundreds of items.

“Yes? I’m the historical researcher for the team.” He couldn’t believe Dimitri didn’t  _ know, _ seeing as he’d heard of it.

“I see. I...use the creative writing and literature resources in my classes,” he explained. Felix couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing, but the big one was still to come. “Rodrigue recommended it to me, but I never looked at the history things.”

Oh. Oh, that made sense. He almost wanted to be annoyed, but there was- well, there was no one to be annoyed at. His father told his ex husband about the project he was working on without mentioning him by name, and Dimitri had just never seen him. And now his father was dead, so Felix couldn’t murder him for it.

“That...makes sense,” he managed. He couldn’t think of anything else to say about it; there was no use getting frustrated at Dimitri for it, and he was loath to ask if Dimitri liked the resources (though if he did, Ashe would definitely want to hear about it). “Anyway. I’ve been doing that ever since. Not much else going on, really.”

Other than second puberty, and getting his tits chopped off. But that was the elephant in the room that everyone could see, rather than the stuff they couldn’t. Felix didn’t feel like mentioning it.

Now he was done, Ingrid leaned back in her chair a little. He hadn’t realised just how intently she had been watching, but now… “How are you doing?” she asked. There was something gentle to her voice, and Felix realised that she was trying to be careful wit him. “Are you- happier there?”

Felix nodded. “Absolutely,” he said. “I can’t wait to get back to my life in Enbarr once this mess is done.”

There was a moment of silence as Felix realised he’d probably just said the wrong thing. He’d only just returned to them, and he was already talking about leaving again. Never mind what he wanted, they were thinking about all the years he’d spent completely cut off from them.

Felix’s heart twinged. Of course. He’d cut them off before, and now...he was going to have to make that choice again. Stay or go? And when he went, how much of his life here could follow? He couldn’t imagine making the choice to cut himself off again, but- he didn’t know if he wanted to make the opposite decision either.

The reality of it hung between them for a few very awkward seconds before Dedue rescued them. “For those of us who don’t know the site,” he said, “what does your work actually involve, Felix?”

Felix would gladly take the escape route, shooting Dedue half a grateful smile. “Mostly reading,” he admitted. “I’m presented with a topic, I look up different pieces of reading I can find, and try to cover all the bases I can. I write a few things up and send it on to our script writer, who…”

It was a good evening, in the end. It wasn’t without its awkward moments and questions that still needed to be answered, but at the very least it surprised him. He hadn’t expected it to go so well.

They still fit together in a way he hadn’t thought possible. Even after all those years, and all that change, they still… He could say mean things to Sylvain and the real meaning was understood. He could tease Dimitri. Ingrid could smile at him and he didn’t feel like she was sharing a ‘boys, right?’ look with him.

In spite of all the distance, they still slotted back together as if Felix had been there all along. And while he’d been expecting whatever revelation that came out of that evening to be uncomfortable, it wasn’t. It was nice.


	4. Building Bridges

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Dimitri firmly back in his life, Felix is forced to accept that his feelings remain. The only difficulty is what comes next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my favourite chapter of the fic, and it has Sian's first piece of art!! There is lots of fluff, but also a few warnings for those who may want to be prepared
> 
> This chapter includes: references to past canonical character death (sorry Rodrigue), references to past gender dysphoria, instances of miscommunication, discussion of a past failed relationship, discussion of mental health issues, discussion of sex and pregnancy (but no actual occurrence of this). There are also very brief references to Claurenz and Marihilda, but neither ship actually features in the fic

Things dragged on in Fhirdiad, for some reason. There were little clauses in paperwork and documents that needed to be tidied up, different things that needed to be closed and opened and pushed away into cupboards never to be seen again. It was frustrating, because Felix did actually like living in Enbarr, but he needed to be in Fhirdiad to solve half of these things; his father had been a pretty old man, and that meant everything was on damn paper.

Because of all that, Felix decided to set up some more permanent things in Fhirdiad. To keep him sane between meetings with people he did  _ not _ want to see, at the very least.

The first of those was picking up his work again. His friends back home had managed to find someone to take his role on temporarily, and while he didn’t actually need the money because of the inheritance he’d just been dropped into, he liked working. It made him feel like he was actually doing something with his life - something useful.

To do that, he had to have access to a library. Which was...strange, honestly. Felix had used the Enbarr libraries for several years. He knew them back to front (at least until he found some obscure shelf on Dagdan medieval art history, tucked away behind three inches of dust), and he was used to them.

He was also uncomfortably used to the Fhirdiad libraries. He’d used pretty much all of them at some point during his first degree; he used to like finding different study spaces to avoid reminding himself of the most recent bout of crying in whichever one he’d used last.

And with familiar spaces, familiar faces were sure to follow. Most of the people were completely new, of course - it had been years since he attended the university. But eventually he spotted someone he knew.

One young woman named Hapi. He’d shared a class or two with her; she was an economics student back then, and given the way students tended to skirt around her and shoot her a glance or two, he’d hazard a guess that she was a teacher now.

“I feel like I know you from somewhere,” she said, squinting at him. She’d been looking at him on and off throughout the afternoon, and the moment Felix had moved to the break space to fill up his water, she followed.

At her words, Felix’s heart sank. She recognised him, and there was a part of him that knew he really shouldn’t deny that he knew her. They’d spent a decent amount of time together, way back when. “You do,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow. “Oh?” she asked. “If you’re who I think you are, then, you look...different?”

Felix nodded. “I’m- do you remember someone from some of your economics and accounting classes with the surname Fraldarius?” Her eyes lit up. “I’m Felix. A...lot has changed since then.”

His heart was racing a little faster than he was strictly comfortable with. He didn’t know why this in particular had managed to set him off, but it sure as Ailell had. The thought of someone recognising and then refusing to accept what had changed was pretty much his worst nightmare.

Fortunately, Hapi just nodded. “I can see that,” she said. “Felix, huh?” She nodded again. “Well, it’s good to see you again. You seem to be doing well for yourself.” The encounter ended with Felix’s heart still racing, but once he calmed down he felt sort of good. It was encouraging.

* * *

He was also, by nature, the kind of man who wanted to fill his life with everything he could. And while there were plenty of things in Fhirdiad that were familiar, there were also plenty of things that weren’t.

“So how do you know about all of these things about the universities here?” one of the people in the small circle in front of him asked. Trans groups had never really seemed like his speed, but Mercedes always dragged him to the handful she attended back in Enbarr. She said it was good to connect with people you shared something with that were also different to you, and while he was loath to change his opinion on something, he was inclined to agree.

“I grew up here,” he explained. “I just moved back recently because of some family business.”

“Ah, I thought I recognised the name,” a young woman said. She was looking at him with a thoughtful expression on her face. “But I don’t think I recognise you, so we can’t have gone to school together.”

Felix chuckled. “You’re a bit young to have gone to school with me,” he said. He couldn’t believe he actually felt  _ old _ talking to someone in her early twenties. Not to mention the teenagers in this group.

“Maybe it isn’t you, then,” she said. “Are there lots of Fraldarius families in this area?”

“A few,” he said with a shrug. “More out east of Fhirdiad, according to my father.”

The woman’s eyes lit up. “That wouldn’t happen to be Rodrigue Fraldarius, would it?”

There was a small note of sadness that struck Felix’s heart. Another person he’d have to explain his father’s death to, clearly. “Yes,” he said.

She smiled a small, sad smile. “I was sorry to hear about him,” she said. “He did a lot of good work on a parenting scheme I ran last year, for parents of trans children.”

Felix was pretty sure his mouth dropped open. He never knew his father had done anything like that. It wasn’t surprising, he supposed, but he almost wished...he wished his father could have known how much something like that probably helped people. And how much it meant, that the kindness he’d shown Felix wasn’t- an act of some kind, only there because his father couldn’t bear to lose his other child.

* * *

The other part of life in Fhirdiad was...Dimitri.

Dimitri was a category unto himself. Every week, like clockwork, he came round for a meal. Normally, he dropped by with a bag of groceries and just said they should have dinner together.

The first few times, he made an excuse about dropping by, or seeing something in the supermarkets that he knew Felix liked (Felix always did like the thing in question, but he  _ didn’t  _ like the way it made his heart flutter). After those few times, he gave up the pretence and just showed up without explanation.

Felix didn’t complain, and Dimitri didn’t give him any particular reason to. If he did, Felix would have no good reason not to turn him away, and he didn’t want to try and think of one.

Dimitri texted, too. ‘Hello, Felix,’ he wrote, usually every single day. ‘How are you doing today?’ He’d ask what Felix had going on, if he had any plans soon, how things were going with whatever Felix complained about the day before.

To his credit, it was nice. Felix spent a lot of time talking to people he didn’t want to have anything to do with in his day to day life, and talking to Dimitri was...the complete opposite. Which wasn’t worrying at all, absolutely not.

Occasionally, Dimitri texted him with suggestions for things he could do; Felix was always complaining about being bored, feeling unsatisfied with the endless meetings with lawyers and representatives (who knew that his father’s will would be tied up in so much red tape?), so Dimitri wanted to provide some kind of remedy to that.

‘Why don’t you visit schools?’ Dimitri asked. ‘You do some fairly high profile work on education, and you speak well about it.’ Felix was only glad Dimitri wasn’t there in person to see him blush a little at those words. ‘Schools would be absolutely delighted to have you.’

And that was how Felix ended up standing in front of a group of students at his old school. Because Dimitri taught there, of all places, even though it was undeniably one of the more...aged schools in the area. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t all that pretty. There was nothing attractive Felix could think of which could draw someone back here.

Well, it wasn’t like he could talk. He was back too, after all, giving some stupid assembly to a bunch of kids who he knew from experience probably wouldn’t listen to him at all. He didn’t remember a single talk that he’d listened to in that hall, though he remembered plenty of scuffles in the hallways and moments holding Dimitri’s hand under the desk.

He tried not to think about it as he walked past all the classrooms he’d once had Maths lessons in. The corridor was now painted a light grey instead of the ugly yellowish colour he remembered from his teenage years, but the rest of it was pretty much the same. He even squinted into the trophy cabinet and saw Glenn’s name on one of the shields.

If he looked hard enough, his old name would be there as well. He decided not to look too closely; it wasn’t worth it.

The talk itself was fine, and exactly what he expected. The students watched him with blank, tired faces, rubbing at their eyes occasionally and only rarely bothering to disguise their yawns. It was too early for them, and he remembered the feeling well. It was definitely too early to care about early Faerghan pedagogical practises.

What  _ wasn’t _ fine was the way Dimitri stood in the corner of the hall, watching him. There was a smile on his face the whole time, and he watched Felix in a way that could only be described as enraptured.

Felix didn’t know what came over him, but he ended his presentation with an unscripted remark. “When I was younger- and no, not that much younger, so don’t look at me like that- I attended this school.” He swallowed, tearing his eyes away from Dimitri. “I had a different name, and wore a uniform I’d never be caught dead in now, and I was absolutely miserable. I hope you lot have it better.”

The students laughed, but Felix caught sight of that telltale look from a few of them. Wonder. The feeling of finally being  _ seen. _

Predictably, a few of them came to speak to him when the presentation was over and all the chairs stacked up in the corners. “Mister Felix,” one of them said, “Mr Blaiddyd said that he was the one who invited you to do this. Is that true?”

Felix glanced at the door that Dimitri, in his slightly too tight shirt, had left through. He nodded. “We knew each other a long time ago,” he explained. “We’ve been...friends for many years.”

“Really?” another asked, eyes bright. “He’s the best, so I’m not really surprised. He helped me come out last year.” They puffed out their chest a little, smiling enthusiastically. Felix was overcome with a need to cry that he hurriedly pushed down. Not now.

He was not going to think about Dimitri, who’d been so unsure and hesitant with him when everything was falling apart. He was definitely not going to think about Dimitri being gentle and encouraging with someone who needed it desperately, learning from the past and using it to help people in the future. Not at all.

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said instead, hoping that everything he was feeling wouldn’t show on his face. “Is Mr Blaiddyd a good teacher?”

“Yes!” another student replied. “He’s  _ really _ cool.” And Felix died inside, because Dimitri was right. His students actually did think he was cool, somehow.

Heaven help the next generation, if they thought that  _ Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd, _ four times champion of Fhirdiad Junior Spelling Bee, was cool.

* * *

“I thought I’d drop round to help you sort through some of those old things, if you’re open to that.” Felix wanted to point out that Dimitri didn’t really  _ need  _ to make excuses to come round anymore, because almost all of them had been pathetic from the start and it was obvious there was something else going on.

But he didn’t point that out, because that would involve interrogating the fact that Felix  _ knew  _ Dimitri wanted something else and that he wasn’t telling him to go away, which meant he wanted something too, and- “Come in,” he answered. “I’m sure there are a few more things we can look through in the attic.”

There were plenty of things. In fact, Felix had been trying to avoid looking through them, but when Dimitri showed up with that specific purpose all the good reasons why just melted away. 

There were boxes upon boxes of items that mixed belongings Felix didn’t even know his father  _ had. _ Like his yearbook. “Oh!” Dimitri said. “You, ah, missed the ten year reunion we did.”

“Was it something I’d regret missing?” he asked. He hadn’t even thought about it at the time, and no one had been able to contact him to give him an invite. Maybe they all thought he was dead.

Except they wouldn’t, because Dimitri probably told them all that he was perfectly fine and  _ probably _ spent the whole evening explaining gender to anyone who mentioned him. Because Dimitri really hadn’t changed all that much.

“Not really,” Dimitri replied after a moment. “There was food. Music. It was very...dry. There were lots of people who were successful that you wouldn’t expect to be, like, um- look!” He flipped to Hilda Goneril’s page. Felix raised an eyebrow; Hilda won the ‘most likely to flunk out of college’ award.

“Why, what’s Hilda doing now?”

“She runs a successful independent jewelry business,” Dimitri answered. “Her wife models the pieces and she sells them in bucketloads.”

“Huh. What about…” Felix turned a few pages forwards to the page for Lorenz Gloucester (or “Lorenz  _ Hellman  _ Gloucester, thank you very much”). “Lorenz?”

Dimitri chuckled. “Believe it or not, he’s married to a prince. They came to the reunion with bodyguards.”

Felix’s mouth dropped open. “Wow,” he said. He supposed it tracked, but still - married to a prince? He thought Lorenz couldn’t get a higher opinion of himself  _ or _ a richer family.

Dimitri turned back a few pages, pointing something out for each page he turned. Felix couldn’t help but hold his breath as the pages continued to flick back; he knew what was coming up. Dimitri clearly did too, because when the page for Fraldarius was due next, he flicked right past it.

“No,” Felix said, his voice catching a little in his throat. “Go back.”

The page was pretty much as he expected. Him, looking a lot rounder and younger and far more naive, frowning at the camera. Even though he looked like he had seen a lot less, there were angry dark circles below his eyes that the photo editor hadn’t seen fit to edit out.

“And I don't need no lessons. After all, everybody's doing their time,” Dimitri read with a small chuckle. “That’s rather fitting in hindsight, isn’t it?”

Felix could only smile, his eyes straying further down the page. Towards the bottom, it noted that he’d won an award voted by the rest of the students. ‘Cutest couple’, alongside one Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd. “Look at that,” he said, pointing to the poorly designed graphic that announced it.

Dimitri...blushed. Felix carefully looked away, trying to ignore the way he felt his own face heat too. It wasn’t from embarrassment, either, nor did it have anything to do with anger or frustration. Oh no.

Trying to push the thoughts out of his mind, Felix attempted to change the topic. “What was your quote, again?” he asked.

Somehow, Dimitri’s face turned even pinker than before. “It was from you,” he said, letting out a chuckle that sounded very slightly strangled. “It was something like… ‘Dimitri is pathetic, but in a sort of endearing way that means you can’t hate him.’”

Felix spluttered. “I don’t even remember saying that,” he said.

“It at least has a grain of truth,” Dimitri admitted, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Oh it’s completely true,” Felix replied. Even if there were lots of things they hadn’t quite figured out back then, he’d hit the nail on the head there.

Dimitri smiled at him, and the only word for it that came to mind was ‘cute’.  _ Oh no. _

Felix was so screwed.

* * *

Anyone who wanted to could call Felix a bit boring, but in the closing evenings of the summer, the best thing he could think of was drinking ginger beer with Dimitri in the garden. When he was a teenager, he’d avoided said garden like the plague - why would he want to go  _ outside?  _ \- but now it was nice.

He could sit there with Dimitri, fairy lights that definitely weren’t bought several years ago for the purpose of decorating his room at university strung out across the patio, and just...be. It was warm, a little dark out, and it was peaceful. Perfect.

Felix looked at Dimitri, at the way the light caught his golden hair, how soft it looked as it framed his face, the single dark freckle on his nose, the depth of the blue in his eye and the brightness of his smile and-

Oh. Felix was still in love with him.

The realisation that he was still at least a little bit in love with his ex husband didn’t come as much of a surprise. Felix had expected it to be earth-shattering, or at least like something finally hitting the ground after falling a great height.

But it wasn’t. It was as natural as breathing. He breathed in and realised he loved Dimitri and that was all there was to it. When he breathed out, he still loved Dimitri. The world kept moving, and all Felix was left with was a question: what now?

Weeks passed and he still had no idea what to do. Confessing would be hard, especially with all the history between them. Ignoring it was out of the question, because Felix knew what tended to happen when he ignored his feelings.

At the same time, talking about it was- unthinkable. Sure, things were better between him and Dimitri than they had been in years now, but that didn’t mean things were  _ good.  _ They definitely weren’t on the level of being in a relationship again. Maybe they never would be, considering all the things Felix had said and done to hurt him.

But there was no use in pretending it wasn’t happening, because Felix was reminded of it with every stray text from Dimitri (texts which came multiple times a day, and Felix replied to every one because fuck, he liked talking to him just as much as before). Every moment passed in silence told him that there were words still left to be spoken.

‘Help,’ he texted after a long deliberation. Immediately, he received three concerned texts back to the group chat. ‘I’m still in love with Dimitri.’

‘Of course you are,’ was Dorothea’s immediate reply. Felix couldn’t help but smile, though something about the way she said it set him on edge.

‘What she means is that we’re happy you realised!!’ Annette added. Goddess, how obvious was he, or were they all just pretending?

‘It’s great that you’ve reconnected,’ Ashe wrote. ‘At the very least, it’s good that there isn’t any bitterness between you.’

‘But there could be,’ he replied. ‘If I mess this up. How do I even deal with something like this??’

‘You have to talk about it’

‘Talk to him’

‘Communicate, you idiot’

‘Okay, okay, I get the message,’ he wrote. He took in a deep breath. ‘So how do I do that?’

‘I think you already know :)’ was Mercedes’ reply. And yeah, maybe she was right. Maybe he already knew.

After all, he’d known Dimitri for as long as he could remember. They could have a single conversation about feelings and not ruin the whole thing. If they couldn’t, then what was all the distance even for?

* * *

“Hey, Dimitri,” Felix said, running through all his prepared lines one last time. He could do this. He could definitely do this, he’d planned endlessly.

Dimitri looked up from the pasta he was stirring, his eye showing something close to concern. Fuck, he probably looked nervous, which meant he’d probably messed it up already. “Is something the matter?” he asked.

Felix shook his head. “No, no, nothing like that,” he said, pushing back against the thought that popped into his mind of calling Dimitri a fool for even suggesting it. It wouldn’t help. “I just wanted to...have a conversation. About something important.”

“I’m all ears,” Dimitri said. He started to fidget with the hem of his shirt; nervous, then. Whatever he was expecting, he was worried about it. Just as Felix’s eyes were drawn to the gesture, he moved to sit down at the table. Felix followed him.

“Are you sure you want to have this conversation right now?” Felix glanced warily at the food, still cooking on the hob. Dimitri followed his gaze and chuckled.

“I think I can manage,” he said. “If something goes wrong, I’ll just turn it off.”

“Well, it’s on you if our dinner gets ruined,” he said, even though this conversation could  _ absolutely  _ ruin their dinner if Dimitri didn’t feel the same way. It would definitely ruin Felix’s dinner.

“I will take full responsibility,” Dimitri said, and damn it, he was so sincere all the fucking time. How did he even do it? “But I believe you may be avoiding the conversation. I really am listening.”

“Okay,” he said. He tried to ignore the heat rising to his cheeks and the tremor he knew was forming in his hands. “Okay. I’m still attracted to you.” Love was maybe too strong right now. Even if it was true, it wasn’t the way to lead on this. “So, if you’ll have me, I’d- like to give it another go. A relationship.”

Silence, for just a moment. In that fraction of a second, Felix was sure Dimitri was going to say the very thing he feared most. “Yes, of course,” he said instead, and Felix’s heart soared. “But…”

“But what?” He crashed back down to earth again. Dimitri was going to say no. 

“We were married before,” Dimitri said, like it wasn’t the most obvious thing in the world. Like Felix didn’t think about it almost every day. “But that didn’t- it didn’t work out. So I don’t...I mean, we can if you want to, but I don’t think it would be a good idea to pick up where we left off.”

“Obviously,” Felix said, trying to calm himself a little. Of  _ course  _ he didn’t want to pick up where they left off, they had both been so miserable, but there was still…

No, he had to be honest. He had to say what he meant, or this would never work. It would crash and burn just like before. “I think we’re closer than before,” he said, resolutely meeting Dimitri’s gaze. “Things will be different this time.”

Dimitri nodded. “Perhaps I’m trying to say- how quickly do you want to go? Or slowly? I don’t want either of us to get the wrong idea.”

“Slowly,” Felix decided. Dimitri’s expression was so careful, so tentative, he didn’t know if that was the right answer. He hoped it was; what if he’d hurt him already, just like that? “I just think going fast would be a bad idea.”

“No no, I agree entirely,” Dimitri said, and now his face lit up in a smile. It was still careful, still not quite the explosion going on in Felix’s heart, but he didn’t think  _ he  _ was showing that either. “We have to give ourselves plenty of time, so we will.”

As he spoke, Dimitri leaned over and tried to take Felix’s hand in his. Felix let him, relinquishing his tight grip on the table. Their eyes met, and there was something there that Felix hadn’t felt in so, so long. “Dimitri,” he said, his voice completely serious. Dimitri tilted his head. “Your sleeve is in your drink.”

Dimitri laughed, and it was the most beautiful sound Felix had ever heard.

* * *

Going slow meant going on dates, working their way up to all the things they’d abandoned so many years before. Felix remembered dreading dates a long time ago; they were full of uncertainties, prone to going wrong and then ruining the mood between them for days or weeks.

He was definitely nervous before this particular date, but it was nothing compared to the negative way he’d always seen them before. No, this was more the kind of nervousness he felt when they first started seeing each other, back when they were teenagers. He felt silly - he felt stupid, even, fretting over the strangest of things.

In the end, it was Lysithea who told him that wearing his hair in a ponytail was fine and Ashe who looked up Dimitri’s social media to verify that yes, the last time he went out to eat and posted about it online he ate something with meat in. Felix felt like a fool, but…

Well, he wasn’t sure he minded being Dimitri’s fool. He sort of missed it.

The date was simple - mundane, even, but they said they’d start slow and Felix wanted to stick to that. Besides, a picnic in the park wasn’t the bad kind of mundane.

In the end, they both brought way too much food for two people to eat. They battled off wasps and ended up giving up on the eating bit about half an hour in. Instead, they just sat there on the blanket and talked.

They talked for hours upon hours. The conversation was about everything and nothing: something funny Dimitri’s students did, a piece of research that stuck out to Felix in his work, their opinions on the new cafe that opened up in place of the one they used to go to as kids.

It was good, and Felix was almost sad when it ended. “I enjoyed this,” Dimitri said, when they walked back towards the park’s exit. They didn’t hold hands - Felix didn’t know much about dating or what it was meant to look like, but holding hands on the first date sounded a bit fast. “Do you want to...have another date?”

“Of course,” Felix said. Maybe he sounded a little snappy, but he didn’t think Dimitri minded all that much. He could tell by now what he meant.

“How about the Fhirdiad markets? We used to do that a lot.”

* * *

Felix hated marketplace dates. He’d always hated them, from the moment Dimitri took him to his first one, and he hated them now after over a year of marriage.

It was always the same. Dimitri’s hand held his tightly, but Felix still felt like he would lose him in the crowds at a moment’s notice. Everything around them was overpriced and tacky. The historical origins of these markets went back hundreds of years, when everything sold was handmade by crafters who dedicated their lives to their trade. There was no sign of that now.

By the time they’d made their way around the whole place, Felix’s head was pounding. Everything hurt, and his vision swam. There was a faint buzzing in his ears that made it hard to do anything but put one foot in front of the other.

At some point, Dimitri bought a mundane trinket; a little wooden bird, shoddily painted and with one of its wings half missing. Neither of them would look at it again, but he always insisted on buying something.

“We should do this again sometime!” Dimitri said, all smiles. He always was after these outings.

Felix wanted nothing more than to say that he never wanted to come to this marketplace again. But Dimitri looked so hopeful, so  _ happy…  _ “Sure,” he said. “We can come back.”

* * *

Felix grimaced. “I never really liked the marketplace dates,” he admitted.

“Oh!” Dimitri said, and internally Felix tried to prepare himself for what would surely be Dimitri’s immense disappointment. “Neither did I.” Oh. “Why didn’t you say so?”

Felix could have asked him the same in return, but answering the question was probably the better option. “I thought it made you happy,” he said. “If you were ever upset, your mood nosedived horrendously. I didn’t want to inflict that on you.” 

“I felt the same,” Dimitri admitted, his face morphing into a small, sad smile. “I felt like we were balanced on a knife’s edge. Anything I did wrong could send you spiralling into a bad mood, and then I would feel foul, and then…”

“We were disasters,” Felix decided, and Dimitri nodded. “Well, at least that’s out of the way now. Why don’t we do something we like instead?”

Dimitri nodded. “I don’t really have any suggestions,” he said, “but I’m willing to take yours.”

“Only if you tell me if you don’t like it,” Felix said. He had a couple of ideas, but no desire to repeat their old song and dance. Dimitri nodded again “How about we go swimming?”

“Really?” Dimitri asked. “I thought you hated swimming.”

Felix had never  _ truly  _ hated swimming. He loved it when he was little, but when they got a bit older- well, in hindsight, he’d hated his body for a reason he couldn’t understand at the time. He’d honestly never tried it since he was a teenager, but… “I’m more confident with my body now,” he said. “I can’t promise I’ll be much  _ good _ at swimming, but I’d like to give it a try.”

He’d disparaged their old way of doing things where they tried to cater to each other, but he’d admit that it was something he’d suggested because Dimitri had mentioned it once or twice in the last few months. He’d called it a ‘good, mindful activity’, which probably just meant he liked exercising.

The Dimitri he remembered from his young adulthood didn’t like swimming either - after the accident, his body was covered in scars. Felix didn’t like to think in metaphors, but there was something to the idea that they’d both grown enough to enjoy this together again.

Felix arrived at the pool in the early morning the following weekend - Dimitri couldn’t do weekdays during the day, and most of the pool’s opening hours were ruled out as too busy. This time, he didn’t feel nearly so nervous about their date, which was a welcome change.

They got changed without talking, though Felix couldn’t help but survey him once they were at the side of the pool. Dimitri had filled out a lot - his shoulders and hips were broader, and the less Felix thought about his chest in a public place the better. His hair was tied back in a bun, and Felix really, really needed to stop staring.

“If we take a wide lane, that should be okay,” Dimitri said. “There aren’t too many people around.” He led Felix over to one end of the pool, where he stopped. Dimitri got into the water like he belonged there, and Felix…

Felix inched a little closer, close enough to stare right down to the bottom of the pool. Was the water cold? How deep was it? Normally he was good at judging distance, but he didn’t trust water after so long avoiding it.

“Felix?” Dimitri asked. He stood flat on his feet, and the water came up to his stomach. It wasn’t too deep, then. “Is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” he answered. “Give me a minute.”

Dimitri nodded, and Felix stared at the water some more. He dipped his foot in and scrunched up his face; colder than he expected. Dimitri’s chuckle echoed around the pool, and Felix sucked in a deep breath and tried to go further in.

It was a strange feeling. The water pressed against him on all sides, and he sort of felt like he was weightless but sort of not. He shuffled his feet along the bottom of the pool, cautious about moving too much in case he lost his balance.

When he dared to look up at Dimitri, the man (was he his boyfriend now? Did Felix get to call him his boyfriend?) was still so far away. Further than Felix had expected. “Trust your body,” Dimitri said. “Relax a little. You know how to swim, so it’ll come back to you.”

Felix nodded and tried to follow his advice. And it did come to him - slowly, sure, but it did. He was never going to be the best swimmer on the planet, but as the morning wore on he was able to feel like he was actually swimming rather than battling the water.

All the while, Dimitri treaded water by his side. Felix had been sure that Dimitri would get bored and want to go do something else, or at least swim on his own rather than at Felix’s infuriatingly slow pace, but he didn’t. He stayed there the whole time.

“Try going underwater,” Dimitri said. “You’ll feel more confident if you submerge yourself.” Something leapt in Felix’s throat, but he couldn’t  _ not  _ take that as a challenge. It was just a bit of water. Why would he worry about it going over his head?

It took more than he expected, but Dimitri was there. Every time he faltered, even when he paused for just a moment, Dimitri shot him a word or two of encouragement. Maybe Felix should have felt like he was being patronising, but...he didn’t. It was actually encouraging, rather than just trying to be.

Eventually, Felix managed to go under. He opened his eyes, trying to see through to - something, he supposed, but he didn’t know what. It just felt wrong to keep his eyes closed. And there, right in front of him, was Dimitri. He was smiling, and the sight of it...Felix could have died happily right there. He was stunning.

Felix smiled back, and then he spluttered. Water in his mouth, fuck. Dimitri opened his mouth, his eye crinkled with laughter, and promptly got a mouthful of water himself. They surfaced in unison, laughing and spluttering and looking like complete, utter fools.

There were other people in the pool, but Felix didn’t even care. In that moment, he didn’t care about anything other than the beautiful, wonderful man in front of him.

* * *

Their dates were good, and all the time they spent together was- incredible, honestly. Felix had never had so much fun in his life, and he’d spent a  _ lot  _ of time dating Dimitri before.

But it did have to end, eventually. Felix didn’t live in Fhirdiad; he had work back in Enbarr, and he’d only stayed in Fhirdiad in the first place to sort out all of his father’s ridiculously complicated belongings and contracts.

“I’m going back to Enbarr soon,” he said one evening, two months into their revived relationship. He and Dimitri had cooked a large meal together, and he knew he maybe shouldn’t ruin their whole evening by dropping this on his boyfriend (his _boyfriend),_ but he didn’t think it could really be avoided. They had to talk about it at some point.

Dimitri’s face fell. “How long until you’re done?” he asked.

“Not long,” he admitted. “I wasn’t expecting it to be so soon, honestly. Things suddenly fell into place, and now it’s all basically wrapped up.”

“I understand,” Dimitri replied. The soft smile Felix had become so used to seeing faded, leaving only disappointment. Something twisted in his gut. “I’m sad to see you go. But maybe…”

“Maybe?” Felix knew what he wanted Dimitri to suggest, but he didn’t know if he’d actually say it. He didn’t want to place his expectations for this relationship on him.

“Maybe we should keep this going. If you’d like to, that is.” Dimitri’s words came out in a rush, and it took Felix a moment to process them.

“I would,” he said. He offered a smile, and received one in return. “I really would. I-I mean- I’ve liked this. I like being with you. So I don’t want to let this all fall away just because I’m moving on.”

“You’ll be able to come back, won’t you?” Dimitri asked.

Felix nodded. “The house is going to a homelessness charity, for crisis housing, so I can come back and stay sometimes, maybe.”

“I’m glad,” Dimitri said, and the tinge of sadness in his tone faded a little. “It’s a good way for the house to be used. Rodrigue would be pleased.”

“...He would,” Felix said. Maybe he shouldn’t care about what his father would think - his past self would say as much, anyway - but he did. Hearing Dimitri’s words was nice.

“Either way, I- well, I already said my piece about how I want to continue this,” Dimitri said. “I won’t ask you to plan to come back to Fhirdiad, not when you haven’t even left yet, but I already can’t wait to see you again.”

“There’ll always be space for you in my home,” Felix said firmly. There tended to be spare rooms - even though they still worked on the same project, some of the original group Felix lived with in the house had moved on. “When you find the time, I’d like to have you over.”

“I’m already looking forward to it,” Dimitri said. His sincerity, as always, warmed something in Felix’s heart. What had he done to retain the attention of someone like him?

Looking at him, still working his way through the huge plate of food in front of him, a thought struck Felix: he’d miss Fhirdiad. He never thought he’d say it, especially with the way he left before, but he would. There was still so much for him here, even after all this time. The bittersweet memories were slowly weighing towards sweet, and he didn’t want that feeling to end.

* * *

Felix hated saying goodbye. The last time he said goodbye to Dimitri, everything had been terrible. His chest hurt, his heart ached, and he’d sort of wanted to cry.

He felt the same this time, but for a whole host of different reasons. When he stood at the gate to finally get on his plane, Dimitri stood by his side, sniffling slightly.

“It’s not like I’m going away forever,” he grumbled. If Dimitri kept this up, he may well cry himself, and no one needed to see that. Felix didn’t need to deal with that on a flight. “Stop being so sad.”

“I can’t help it,” Dimitri complained, his left hand clutching Felix’s right. “I’ll miss you.”

“I’ll miss you as well, you sap.” Felix squeezed Dimitri’s hand once, and, before letting go, he made a decision. He turned to face Dimitri once more, catching his gaze firmly. He stood on his tiptoes and leaned up, up, until his lips brushed Dimitri’s.

He was leaving, but the kiss felt like coming home.

Somehow, it was even better than their first kiss all those years ago. Maybe that was because, at the time, Felix had been depressed as all fuck and so had Dimitri. Maybe, after all these years, they were better at kissing.

Or maybe Felix just loved Dimitri all the more, alongside all the flaws and all the distance they’d willingly and unwillingly put between each other. Whatever it was, the kiss was almost better than anything he’d ever felt before.

The best thing he’d ever felt, of course, was the warmth in his chest when he pulled away and saw the look on Dimitri’s face. The light in his eyes, the soft smile, the tiniest traces of pink dusting his cheeks.

“Until next time, Dimitri,” he said, and then he turned to go. Because, unlike last time, he couldn’t wait to be in Dimitri’s arms again.

* * *

When he finally arrived back in Enbarr (after an entire flight thinking near-constantly about everything he’d miss about Dimitri, because of course that was all he could think of), Felix was glad to be home. He’d been away much longer than he initially expected, and he missed the city he’d grown to love. He missed the people, missed his  _ bed. _

So he was happy to be home and back to the familiar routine he’d lived for several years. But there was also something new, yet only half strange: he missed Dimitri.

It was a different kind of missing him to the one Felix felt before. That one had been full of bitterness, words unsaid that he thought he’d never get the chance to say. This one...this one was staring down at his phone every other minute, waiting for another text. It was seeing blue flowers and wondering what Dimitri’s face would look like if he presented them to him. It was taking a photo of a dog and trying to predict how many heart emojis Dimitri would send in response.

It was loneliness, but it was also companionship. It was anticipation, knowing that the next day would bring happiness, as would the next, and eventually that happiness would involve seeing each other again.

‘Work was pretty slow today,’ Felix wrote. Over the last month, it had become routine that they would at least dedicate their evenings to texting each other, catching the other up on the day they’d regretfully spent apart. ‘I did a lot of reading, like usual, but nothing really jumped out.’

‘Are you going to be able to rustle something up for the next script?’ Dimitri asked. ‘I saw on the website that you were planning something on Alliance courting rituals in the 1500s, and I can’t wait to see it.’

‘Yeah, that’s the one.’ Dimitri had also taken to watching all the videos Felix contributed to, saying he liked seeing Felix’s face and hearing his voice, or at least hearing words he knew Felix wrote. It was sort of weird, but in a sweet way. ‘It should be fine. Today was a bit of a dead end, but I have some fun reading lined up on clothing tomorrow.’

‘What are you going to find, do you think? .)’

‘I hate that stupid emoticon. I wish Sylvain never told you that it could be funny.’

‘.(‘

‘And I’ll probably find that taking your clothes off was a sign that you were sexually interested in someone.’

Dimitri’s reply took a while to arrive, which probably meant he’d dropped his phone. ‘I think that one might be universal.’

‘Fair enough. How was your day?’

‘Pretty much the same as usual,’ Dimitri said, ‘so it was just as chaotic as all the days that came before it. One of the students in another class came into mine and said she refused to go back to the other classroom. It was...inconvenient, but I had to make it work.’

‘You should have just booted her back into the hallway.’

‘Felix! I cannot do that to a student. If she is willing to work in my class and not in another, I cannot in good conscience return her to somewhere she wouldn’t learn. I just had to get her to share a book with someone else.’

‘If you say so. I still think you’re too soft on them.’

‘I thought you said before that you liked how kind and understanding I was to them .)’

‘Of course I do.’ It was true; Felix would probably have done anything for a teacher like Dimitri when he was in school. ‘You just need a bit of reality for balance sometimes.’

Dimitri didn’t reply for a while, which almost had Felix worried that he’d said the wrong thing. It happened sometimes, of course - it was unavoidable a lot of the time. But he usually trusted Dimitri to  _ say  _ when he’d said the wrong thing. ‘I miss you, Felix.’

Felix hesitated. It was hard to think about saying it, after all the time he’d spent telling himself that they weren’t that far away, that they’d spent  _ years  _ apart and it wasn’t a big deal, but… ‘I miss you too,’ he replied. He missed him a lot.

* * *

“I’m glad you had the time to call, Felix,” Dimitri said, and even through the slightly grainy quality of his webcam, Felix could make out the glowing smile on his face. “I miss you.”

Felix flushed. “I miss you as well,” he said. “I feel almost pathetic about it.”

“Don’t!” Dimitri replied. “You shouldn’t feel pathetic over the strength of your feelings, no matter what those feelings are. Sometimes, I just find myself thinking about you. How I miss the feeling of your hands in mine, the sensation of our lips touching. I miss the curve of your hair, the sound of your laugh...I miss seeing just how handsome you are in the flesh.”

Felix buried his face in his hands. The sheer unflirty phrasing of ‘in the flesh’ aside, he did quite like hearing the word handsome fall from Dimitri’s lips. It was nice, when he was so used to hearing that same voice call him beautiful, or pretty. “Tell me that to my face so I can kiss you for it,” he mumbled.

“What was that, Felix?” And Dimitri’s face was such a picture of innocence that Felix knew  _ immediately  _ that he was being teased. But he removed his hands from his face and repeated it anyway.

Dimitri smiled. “May I?” he asked. “I’d quite like to.”

So, the next time Faerghus had a school holiday, Felix stood for an hour in Enbarr’s airport waiting for the delayed plane to arrive. He knew that when Dimitri arrived, he’d see him immediately—Dimitri was too tall to miss—but he couldn’t help but watch eagerly anyway.

His heart leapt when he saw the first sign of that long blond hair. It was all he could do not to sprint directly towards him, throw himself in Dimitri’s arms. But he was stronger than that, and also a little too prone to feelings of embarrassment about public affection, so he held himself back.

When Dimitri spotted him, his face split into a wide, sunny grin. Exactly the smile Felix had missed even more than he realised. Hiking his rucksack up higher on his shoulders, Dimitri sprinted the rest of the distance towards Felix, his arms open to embrace him.

And hey, maybe Felix didn’t want to be the one to initiate it, but who was he to refuse if his huge, excited boyfriend ran directly at him with the promise of a warm, tight hug? He relaxed into Dimitri’s arms, holding him as close as he could in return, taking in every inch of him that he could.

When Dimitri pulled back, Felix immediately leaned in again, this time for a kiss. Their lips touched once, twice, three times, until Felix decided to pull away and actually greet him. “I hope you had a safe trip,” he said.

Dimitri threw his head back in laughter, and while Felix had no idea what was so funny, he joined in. He couldn’t help it; he was just so happy to have Dimitri back by his side again.

* * *

“You’re absolutely sure you want to go on a date to the palace?” Felix asked.  _ He  _ loved the place, sure, but he hadn’t known Dimitri to take much interest in history before. Or architecture, for that matter. He’d definitely just suggested it because he knew Felix would enjoy it, and he didn’t want the date to just be a treat for him. Not when Dimitri had come all this way.

“I do,” Dimitri replied, his voice firm. “I think I’ll enjoy it. There are plenty of interesting things there, aren’t there?”

Felix nodded. “There are lots of places to go in Enbarr, though,” he argued. “You could pick something that’s more your speed.”

“I want to go to the palace,” he repeated. “I have it on good authority that there may be someone who can tell me a lot about it.”

Dimitri was right, of course; when the pair of them entered the courtyard, he couldn’t resist the temptation to start rattling off every fact he knew about the place. “So this is the entrance area,” he said. “Over here, there used to be a statue of the first Emperor of the Adrestian Empire, but it’s long since been removed. We don’t actually know where it went or who removed it, but apparently it still exists in a private gallery somewhere. The Adrestian government has been trying to get it back for years.”

Dimitri laughed. “What was he like?” he asked.

“Well, we don’t really know.” Out of the corner of his eye, Felix noticed someone stop. They were trying not to look at him, but they were clearly listening. “He was deeply connected with the Church of Seiros, to the point that some scholars argue that he and Seiros were romantically involved. But it’s pretty difficult to know exactly what they were like, because there was a concerted effort to get rid of a lot of the documents surrounding the early Emperors.”

When he looked over at the empty plinth again, it was clear that even more people had stopped to listen. “Records only really pick up with Edelgard von Hresvelg, who had a pretty ruthlessly efficient civil service. Really, she introduced the concept of the civil service to Fódlan, but she-” he cut himself off when he caught sight of a school group staring directly at him. “Um.”

“Excuse me,” Dimitri said, his voice still gentle as he turned out towards the gathered crowd. “My boyfriend isn’t a tour guide. Would you be so kind as to leave us be?”

Fortunately, the crowd listened to him and dispersed soon enough. After that, Felix didn’t really feel like going into the enclosed halls of the palace itself. He didn’t know what had come over him, really, he just...he wasn’t used to speaking to a crowd unprepared. This was meant to be for Dimitri.

They ended up wandering the gardens of the palace, hand in hand. Dimitri was quiet, clearly lost in thought. It was something Felix had noticed several times in the last two days. There was something on his mind.

“Is something eating at you?” he asked. Dimitri looked down at him, a tiny expression of surprise on his face. “It’s really obvious. Just tell me?”

Dimitri sighed, but then nodded. “You don’t have to answer me if you don’t want to,” he said. “I just...spending time here, in the place you went after- after everything happened. I know you were hurting in the wake of everything falling apart back at home, but you just disappeared off the face of the earth. I wanted to know why.”

Ah. That made sense. “It was hard,” he admitted. He glanced around them and found the nearest bench, leading Dimitri over and sitting down. This needed some explaining. “I felt like everything in the past was wrong, and that I’d be happy if I just cut it out. Does that make sense?”

Dimitri nodded, but the frown on his face didn’t fade. “It hurt the rest of us too,” he said. “You were our friend, first and foremost, and to have you just vanish like you didn’t- it was like you didn’t exist to us.”

The gardens were full of mid spring blooms. If Felix had a mind for poetry, he’d guess that probably meant something. “What about you?” he asked. Dimitri looked at him questioningly. “You lost the most when I left you behind. Don’t act like you didn’t feel something.”

“Do you remember when we spoke about what I’d done in the period you were away?” Dimitri asked. Felix nodded; he remembered how Dimitri had dodged the topic. “I spiralled. Badly, really. I thought I wasn’t good enough to help you, so I definitely didn’t deserve anything like your love.”

“Dimitri, I-”

“No, let me tell you,” he said. Felix didn’t hear that fragile tone in his voice very often. He hadn’t wanted to hear it again, really, but if Dimitri wanted to say… “I was let go from my job at some point. I was- a mess, really. I couldn’t process the fact that, really, I was grieving you when you weren’t even dead.”

“I may as well have been,” Felix admitted. “I removed myself from your life. I was there one day and gone the next. Death...isn’t so dissimilar.”

“Perhaps not,” Dimitri said, “but I hadn’t lost a spouse to illness. I let my husband fall away when he was right there in front of me, all because I couldn’t be good enough for him. It wasn’t...I had to move, because I couldn’t stand seeing all the places we’d spent time together. But even when I was unpacking, they were all still our  _ shared  _ belongings rather than just mine.

“I don’t think I ever really got back on my own two feet. I was- I was hospitalised, for a while.” There, Felix took one of Dimitri’s hands in his. He couldn’t work out whether it was his hand that was shaking, or Dimitri’s, or maybe it was both of them. “I wasn’t doing well. I stayed with your father for a while, and once I could finally stand on my own again, I moved somewhere else and got a new job.”

“I shouldn’t have left you like that,” Felix said. “I’m...sorry.” The apology didn’t sound sincere, but the words were so hard to get out. Felix didn’t even know what else to say. He didn’t know if there was anything he  _ could  _ say to make that right.

Dimitri didn’t say it was fine before he continued, which was fair. Felix probably wouldn’t either. “Eventually I attempted dating again. I thought I needed to move on, but the very first date I went on was with someone who looked almost exactly like you.” He broke off with a laugh. “I gave up for a while because it just...wasn’t happening. Every time I looked for someone, it turned out I was looking for people like you, and- I sound pathetic, don’t I?”

A little, honestly, but it was understandable. “No,” Felix said. “You sound more like you were hurting. Just...get to the point.” He didn’t know quite how much of this he could stand to hear.

“I ended up trying to date someone who was no one like you, and eventually I found Dedue. But I didn’t...well, there wasn’t a romantic attraction there. We hit it off, but only as friends. I suppose I’m just glad he stuck around.”

“He seems like a good friend,” Felix said. He hadn’t spoken to Dedue much past their handful of meetings where Dimitri was also there, but he liked him. He’d been there for Dimitri when Felix wasn’t, and he liked to think he was mature enough to not resent him a little for that.

“He is, and he helped me realise something important,” Dimitri said. “I was fine being single, I decided. Even though the relationship you and I had ended unhappily, I didn’t want another one. I wanted to get myself back to living and just...be happy. I wanted to live without worrying about romantic milestones or what the people around me were doing.”

Felix could understand a feeling like that. Every so often, especially in his later years in Enbarr, he’d worried about how quickly everyone was growing up around him. People younger than him were off getting married. Some of the people he had classes with had children by now. “It’s not like we’re old,” he said.

Dimitri laughed, but it sounded almost weak. “We’re old compared to some,” he said. Old compared to Glenn, but neither of them wanted to say it. He still lingered like a spectre over some things, even after all this time. “But you’re right. And it’s not as dramatic or wonderful as everything you did while you were away, but I’m doing well for myself. I just- didn’t want that hanging between us, I suppose.”

When he finished speaking, Dimitri let out a long, shaky breath. Felix squeezed his hand as they sat in silence, watching the clouds go by for just a while.

“I’m sorry,” Felix said eventually. He hoped Dimitri knew just how sorry he was. “I hurt you with everything I did, and all I did was use it to hurt myself without thinking about you. You...don’t have to forgive me.”

“No,” Dimitri said firmly. “I was the one who left you in a situation where you felt like you had to break it off. I’m sorry too.”

“It wasn’t your fault, I-”

“Stop, Felix,” Dimitri said, and now he turned to him, practically pinning Felix to the bench with his gaze. “We were both emotionally unavailable for each other. I am sorry, and you are sorry. We should accept that and move on.”

Felix didn’t know what else to do other than nod. He felt like there was something caught in his throat. “Yeah,” he said. His voice came out quiet, but he knew Dimitri could hear it. “Yes. You’re right.”

Dimitri went home a couple of days later, and Felix hadn’t known that he could miss him even more until that moment. When Dimitri got on that plane...it felt like something had been torn away from him. Something good, something finally whole.

The way it hurt wasn’t entirely bad.

* * *

‘How are the cats?’

‘They’re good! .) Floofle got stuck on the scratching post today and yowled so loud my neighbour thought someone had been murdered.’

‘Did they call the police to rescue your fucking cat?’

‘No, actually. They probably should have if they actually thought it was murder, but I think they were exaggerating.’

‘So they just left the poor thing shouting until you got back?’

‘It started at about half three, so I would have been back soon anyway. She was okay.’

‘Do I get a picture of the survivor?’

‘The cat or me, who had to unlatch her while she was still convinced that the world was ending?’

‘Both. You’re already missing an eye, the battle scars can’t be that bad’

‘Can it wait until the date? I can get her to sit in my lap.’ 

In the end, it waited until the date. It was a routine of sorts they'd established, after six months of long distance - they liked spending time together, but there weren't always things to say. Hence, they ended up doing movie dates. It gave them something to talk about, something to do, and both of them could catch up on all the things their friends insisted it was weird they didn't already know.

It was definitely a form of routine that Felix appreciated. It made things easier between them, which was drastically needed sometimes. Because with all that distance, they couldn't always be there for each other. Couldn't always say the right things.

'Do you ever wonder if we'll last this time?' Dimitri asked one evening, almost completely out of the blue. They'd been talking about the fish documentary they'd both, by coincidence, watched at the same time that night.

'I don't see why not,' Felix said. There was no reason why they shouldn't. 'I'm not planning on going anywhere this time, Dimitri.'

'You probably didn't think that before.' And yes, he was right, but...

'Is this about something in particular?' he asked.

'No, I was just thinking about it,' Dimitri wrote. 'And whether we can promise things to each other when this could vanish again, just like before.'

Felix bit his lip, a slither of ice making its way into his heart. 'Do you think I'm going to do that'

'Why not? It happened before'

'This time is different'

'Why?'

Felix felt a little bit like his heart had stopped. His breathing was too fast, his chest hurt,  _ everything _ hurt. His vision went blurry as he stared at his phone, unsure of what to say next or why he even cared quite so much. The impulse to snap was so there, so real, but he couldn't. He knew he couldn't, because it would ruin everything just like Dimitri already knew he would, and-

He didn't manage to reply before Dimitri got another text in. 'We need to stop,' he wrote. 'This isn't going to go well if we keep going. Let's take a breather and set a time to come back.'

It was so scripted, so carefully put together, that Felix just knew it was something Dimitri had practised with someone else. He didn't know if he actually minded that.

‘You’re right. Give me half an hour?’

‘I think that sounds like a good idea.’

Felix let out a shaky sigh as he threw his phone against his pillow, trying to calm his breathing. He’d nearly fucked it up. Dimitri had nearly fucked it up.

All this time, all this development, and they still couldn’t keep it together? Why was he still kidding himself into thinking that this would work?

No. No, he needed to calm down. That was what this was for. They’d let things spiral out of hand and that wasn’t good, but it didn’t mean they couldn’t resolve it. All he had to do was clear his head and come back to their conversation with fresh eyes later.

‘I’m sorry,’ was the text that greeted Felix when he picked up his phone again. ‘That was due to my poor mood. I shouldn’t have taken it out on you, and I apologise for doing so.’

‘You don’t have to treat it so formally,’ Felix replied. ‘Can I call you so we can talk it through?’

‘Of course,’ Dimitri said. Felix’s hand hovered over the button for a few moments, knowing that the conversation wouldn’t be pretty.

But not everything could be pretty. They were people, not characters in a storybook. So he pressed the button and let the phone ring. “Hello?”

“Felix, I’m so sorry.” Dimitri’s voice tumbled all out in a rush.

“Stop, it’s okay,” he said. He wasn’t sure if it  _ was _ okay, not yet, but if he had anything to say about it then it would be. Dimitri’s apologies wouldn’t do anything to fix this. “Just tell me what went wrong, why you said those things.”

Felix could hear Dimitri’s breathing on the other end of the line. “I’m worried our relationship will fall apart again,” he said. “I...spoke to a colleague about it today, and he said that it would be fine this time because we actually care about the relationship now, but…”

“Bollocks,” Felix replied. Dimitri inhaled sharply. “We cared about it before, we just-”

“We weren’t very good for each other,” Dimitri said with a chuckle. He actually sounded sort of amused, and Felix didn’t know if that was a good sign.

“We weren’t in the right place to support each other,” Felix corrected. “We could have been good for each other, I think, we just had no way of dealing with how we felt, so we got into those stupid- patterns.”

“Where I thought I wasn’t good enough for you and pushed you away,” Dimitri said. “And then when you needed me, I felt paralyzed.”

“And when you needed me, I felt bitter about it,” Felix continued. He knew, logically, that they’d been doing the same things and feeling the same way for  _ years,  _ they just didn’t do anything about it. “And then I felt bad for wanting a response from you.”

And then he felt like he wasn’t good enough for him, and pushed him away. And when Dimitri needed him, he felt paralyzed and bitter. And so the cycle continued, over and over, until they both fell apart.

Felix’s gender had nothing to do with the end of their relationship, not really. It was just the spark that lit the fire they’d been building all their lives.

“We were a mess,” Dimitri said, his voice so soft. It didn’t crack, though. Not even as he continued. “We need to do better this time.”

“I think we will,” Felix said. “Maybe it’ll take a while, and maybe we’ll have…” He gestured at the air before remembering that Dimitri couldn’t see. “Arguments. Like today. But if we figure it out piece by piece, we’ll get there.”

"When you can, could you visit?" Dimitri asked. For a moment, Felix stared at the phone. Dimitri couldn't see his expression of disbelief, but that didn't stop him from being confused. "Felix?"

"Why Fhirdiad?" he asked.

"Oh!" Dimitri laughed slightly nervously. "I thought it through when I stepped back from this. I thought...maybe we should talk about how to make this work. So things like this don't happen over and over."

"I think that makes sense," Felix agreed. He didn't feel quite real, still, like something had shocked him onto a path where all he could do was follow a script in his head, but he could do this. He could understand that.

They’d get there. Felix knew they would.

* * *

When Felix visited next, they both knew they had somewhere they needed to go. Because dates lined up in the strangest of ways, and it was only when Felix booked his flight to Fhirdiad that he realised he was set to fly in on the anniversary of his father's death.

He never understood quite why, but it was always sunny when Felix visited a graveyard. His father’s grave sat next to the slightly worn stone of his brother’s, and the sunlight caught the slight shine to the letters engraved upon it.

It was quiet; graveyards always were. He and Dimitri stood side by side, each laden with a small bunch of white flowers. His were for Glenn, and Dimitri’s were for Rodrigue, not that they could even appreciate them- “Say something,” Felix said. “I don’t want to stand here in silence.”

Dimitri knelt down, placed his flowers against the headstone, and stood upright once more, taking Felix’s hand in his in one swift movement. “Do you think he’d be proud of us?” he asked.

“Probably,” Felix managed. There was something rough in his throat. “I can’t believe I used to be jealous of you over his affection. He loved us both as if we were his sons, and that should have been enough for me.”

“Do you…” Dimitri’s voice was quiet, and when Felix looked over he swallowed. “Stop me if this is too much. I was just wondering if we fought over that because  _ you  _ wanted to replace Glenn as the son figure.”

You weren’t meant to laugh in graveyards, but Felix couldn’t hold in his chuckle. Maybe this place deserved some joy. “Yeah,” he said. “I wanted to be Glenn. I just didn’t realise why at the time.” He paused, looking at Glenn’s grave. Tracing the words with his eyes, just as he’d done a hundred times before. “I made it in the end, though.”

A beat of silence. Dimitri squeezed his hand. Inhaled. “Felix, I love you.”

Felix thought about the last time he’d heard those words. Spoken quietly in the depths of the night when everything was falling apart around him, a time when he wasn’t able to reply.

“I love you too, Dimitri.”

They’d come a long way since then.

* * *

"I already talked a lot about this in the past few years," Dimitri admitted once they got back home, his tone almost sheepish. "It was always the question on my mind. Why it might not have worked out, even with how well we knew each other. And the thing people kept telling me, time and time again..."

"If you're going to tell me about the magic of communication, I will throw this chip at you," Felix said, brandishing the object. They'd stopped on the way back to the flat to buy some, both of them famished and slightly high on the feelings they let out in the graveyard.

"They're between us, beloved," Dimitri said, and  _ Goddess  _ the sweet note to his tone there could have killed Felix on the spot. "I'll just strike back. So I'm going to tell you we need to communicate better."

Felix, true to his word, threw a chip at Dimitri. Dimitri laughed, and threw it straight back at him, because of course he did. "Talking about our feelings, spending time with each other, and not letting the other stew in bad feelings," Felix said. "Did I get it all down?"

"No blaming yourself for what you see as your own problems," Dimitri said firmly. "If they're making you feel bad, then it's my problem too."

"Fine," Felix said. "Sure, fine. But that goes for you too - no bottling things up, and no letting yourself sit in a puddle of trauma for however many years you carried that around with you." Sometimes, Felix wondered how they'd made it through those darkest years. How they'd ever thought they were even out on the other side, better again when they'd never addressed a thing.

But that, too, was a long time ago now. They'd grown a lot since then.

Dimitri nodded. "Can I ask you for one too?" he asked. Felix wiggled a chip in his direction, and he correctly took that as a cue to continue. "Don't push people away. Not me, not anyone. If you feel like we shouldn't be here, accept that it's your brain giving you the...wrong signal."

Felix pushed down the feeling that was annoyed Dimitri even brought that up. It was true, of course. There was no point objecting to it, even if the words stung a little. "Done," he said. "And lastly..."

"Lastly?"

"You were worried about permanence," Felix said. His breathing rattled uncomfortably in his chest as he tried to get it out. He loved this man. He could take this step. Dimitri said it first, so he was going to say this. “I want this to last. So I don't want to do distance anymore."

"O-oh, Felix, I mean I-"

"Shush," Felix replied. "Let me finish. I can't quit my job, and you can't quit yours, but mine can move. I did it here for months, after all. So I'd- I'll move in. If you'll have me back in your bed again."

Dimitri threw back his head and laughed that bright, clear laugh that Felix had fallen in love with time and time again. "I think it was you who kicked me out of it in the first place," he said. "I'd love to have you back at my side for good again, Felix. More than I can say."

"Hey now," Felix said. "What was that you said about communicating a couple minutes ago?"

Dimitri threw the first chip that time. Not many more got eaten that evening, but they  _ did  _ spend a little longer than they would have liked picking smushed potato up off the floor.

* * *

“I swear these boxes are heavier than last time,” Dimitri said with a laugh.

Felix looked him up and down, leaning against the car door with another box in his hands. “Maybe you’re just weaker this time,” he said. “We’re not in our twenties anymore.”

“If I pull my back, you’re going to have to set it back in place,” Dimitri warned. They moved back towards the flat, and despite his bold words, Dimitri didn’t seem to be struggling all that much.

“That would rely on me knowing how to do that,” he said. Dimitri laughed, and  _ Goddess  _ it was so much better than the last time Felix moved. It felt like he’d finally come home.

Once they were done, they flopped down on the sofa. Felix no longer found it surprising just how easily he tucked back into Dimitri’s side; there’d always been a comfort in the position, but back at the start of their new relationship he’d worried that it wouldn’t come so naturally anymore.

It wasn’t so - almost everything came naturally with Dimitri, now.

Almost everything, anyway. “Are you  _ still _ working on that?” Felix asked. It was a couple of weeks since he moved in, well past reasonable working hours, but Dimitri was still at his desk. Felix watched, worried, as Dimitri repeatedly rubbed at his good eye.

“Yes,” Dimitri replied, his voice a little terse. “I want to get it done tonight.”

“It’s late,” Felix reasoned. “I’m going to bed soon. At least take a break for now.” If he got Dimitri away from his work, maybe he could persuade him to sleep; he deserved this.

“Felix, this is important to me,” he said firmly. “We can’t spend all of our non-working hours together.”

“Can you just- set some limits?” Felix asked. “It’s eleven at night. I know you love your students, but you deserve a break too.”

Dimitri slumped in his chair. His face was turned away from him, but Felix could take a guess at the expression on it. "I suppose..." He sighed. "I could afford to set a handful of limits, perhaps. But you-"

"I will respect your dedication as long as it doesn't hurt you," he said firmly, already knowing the end to Dimitri’s sentence before it left his mouth. "And not a moment longer. I won't watch you work yourself into the ground, and I wouldn't want you to expect me to."

Dimitri nodded and stood from his chair. "Alright," he said, rolling his shoulders and offering Felix a small smile. "Let's do something else."

* * *

Actually living in the same space meant that the movie dates of the past came to an end. Instead, they replaced a laptop with the cinema. It was a simple change, with a few key differences - Felix got to see and react to Dimitri's full feelings about horror movies, and it was probably the best thing he'd ever experienced.

Dimitri was not a coward. Felix had known him his whole life, and there was nothing about Dimitri that could be described as timid, or prone to fear. Sure, he'd had plenty of instances of anxiety, feelings that bordered on apprehension or nerves, but this...

Felix enjoyed the feeling of Dimitri's hand clutching his tightly. He kept one hand over Dimitri's the whole time, right from the opening shots, and while Dimitri had a grip slightly akin to iron at times, he didn't actually mind that much. It was funny, actually.

“You’re such a sap,” Felix said, tactically ignoring the fact that, even as he spoke, he raised a tissue to dab at Dimitri’s eye. “They were fine.”

“You love me really,” Dimitri challenged. His puffy face turned towards Felix, and there was the tiniest of smiles on his face.

“I do,” Felix agreed.

Time wore on, and the months of their relationship started to approach the one year mark. A lot had happened in that year, and Felix felt more confident in his closeness with Dimitri - and the future that entailed for the both of them - than ever before.

But there was still one thing. Just one more thing they truly, desperately needed to work out.

“We need to talk about why our old relationship failed,” he said. Dimitri’s sleepy expression shifted into something else, and he inched across the bed to lie closer to Felix. He took Felix’s hands in his.

“Is everything alright?” he asked.

“It is now,” Felix confirmed. His voice was steadier than he expected it to be when he finally worked up the nerve to talk about this. “I just...want some closure. On my end.”

“Of course,” Dimitri said. “I wouldn’t mind knowing either, but I have a good idea.”

* * *

“I know it’s been a while, but maybe…” Dimitri stood over the breakfast table. It was the morning before the realisation that would change everything - not that either of them knew it yet. “We’ve been married for a while, and with my work going so well and yours going fantastically, maybe-”

“Just say it,” Felix said. There was something bitter in the pit of his stomach. He knew what Dimitri was going to say.

“I thought, perhaps we could try to have a baby.”

There it was. Dimitri, ever since he was a teenager, had always wanted to have children. Felix had helped him through the tougher nights with half-whispered promises of something - someone - to look forward to in the future.

Dimitri would be a good father. There was a kindness to him, a tenderness. He understood everything and had seemingly endless patience.

Felix did not want to be a mother.

“No,” Felix said. This was one thing he would not move on. No matter how many times Dimitri asked, hinted, or anything, he wouldn’t do it.

“Is it me?” Dimitri asked, his voice heartbreakingly soft. “We haven’t- not since we got married, and-”

“You can say the word sex,” Felix spat. There was a reason they hadn't done it again - Felix hated every second. Loathed it, even. Though Dimitri had spent hours preparing and even longer trying seemingly everything under the sun, Felix couldn't enjoy it. So they'd never done it since.

"Am I the reason we never have sex, then?" Dimitri asked. There was something  _ angry _ blazing behind his eyes, replaced immediately by pain and horror and - Felix made him feel like that. Again, because this wasn't the first time they'd had this conversation and there was no way it would be the last.

"I don't know," Felix replied, "but I don't want to. Isn't that enough for you?" He didn't know. He didn't know why he didn't like sex, or why he didn't want to have a baby, or be a mother, or-

There were things there Felix didn't want to think about. Things he definitely couldn't say aloud to his husband, now hovering even more anxiously over him.

"Sweetheart, I..." Dimitri sighed. "I need to go to work or I'll be late. I don't know if you'll want to pick this up later, but if you do then I'll hear it. Alright?"

"Fine," Felix said, but his mind wasn't there. It was barely with Dimitri at all.

It was with the realization on the horizon that would change everything forever.

* * *

“I should have known,” Dimitri said, letting out a soft sigh. His eye was no longer sleepy, but instead held all that tenderness that Felix never had any idea how to process. Not even after all this time. “I never should have put so much pressure on you about it. I  _ knew  _ it was making you unhappy, I just thought…”

He shook his head. Felix moved to take his hands. “I knew you wanted children,” he said. “Ideally, I would have been able to talk to you about it. I didn’t.”

“Well, we can talk about it now,” Dimitri said, squeezing Felix’s hand. “I cannot lie to you - one day, I would sorely like to raise a child. But if it would make you uncomfortable, then we never have to. If you wanted to have sex but not children, then the same applies. It's up to you, and affects you far more than I."

"It sounds like you've rehearsed this," Felix said letting a small smile play on his lips.

"I have," Dimitri admitted. "I knew that even if this wasn't the problem in the first place, it would have come up at some point - should have."

"Well, the answer is probably the one you're expecting," he said. "I don't want to have children physically. I don't think I can, actually. But maybe, one day, we might want to adopt. I don't want to take the idea off the table entirely."

Dimitri's returning smile was bright, and it lifted a little of the apprehension in Felix's mind. He'd known that, whatever his answer, Dimitri probably would have accepted it, but it was good to see regardless.

"And...sex?" Dimitri asked. Then, because he was Dimitri and apparently still couldn't say the word even at thirty, he blushed. "I-I'm not propositioning you! I just wanted to make sure we were on the same page."

"I don't think I'll want that either," he said. He'd long since come to terms with the fact that, actually, he didn't want this. He didn't know if it was because of how he felt about his body in general, or something in his mind, or something else entirely, but...he didn't want sex.

"Alright," Dimitri said. He glanced over at the clock. "It's nearly ten. Do you want to get up?"

Felix looked at the clock himself. Normally, he'd be up hours before now. But right now... "No," he said. "I think we can stick around a little longer." As he spoke, he shifted closer to Dimitri. He didn't think it was an exaggeration to say that he'd never felt safer or happier in his arms than in that moment.

* * *

On the first year anniversary of their relationship (of getting together? Getting back together? They'd spent so long together and not together that at this point that Felix didn't know if the word they put on it really mattered. They just wanted to celebrate), they went to get dinner together. 

"Your table is booked for outside," the waiter explained, leading them through the restaurant and out the back. It wasn't all that brightly lit, with only a handful of lamps scattered around the courtyard and the candles on the table itself, but Felix didn't mind. The important thing was that it would be quiet.

Felix had been on a lot of dates over the years, and all of them were with Dimitri. He'd been on shitty dates to a fast food restaurant, fancy dates where they both dressed up. He'd been on a honeymoon, which was basically just one long date where they were a little too miserable to warrant the moniker of 'honey'. They'd experienced a lot of things, and over the years Felix would admit that Dimitri had gained a flare for romance.

Dimitri was nervous; that much, Felix could tell. He ordered something fruity for them to drink, and only realised once the words left his mouth that it was probably alcoholic.

Felix ordered tap water, because he was pretty sure that if he drank anything else it would feel like acid in his throat.

It wasn't that he didn't want to be there. It was lovely, really: the food was good, the service was unnervingly fast, and even with Dimitri's palpable nervousness the conversation flowed easily between them.

No, Felix was nervous. He was nervous about the little box in his pocket that meant everything and almost nothing at the same time. He was nervous about what would be the right moment, the wrong moment.

"I'm glad we got to do this," Dimitri said. "It's nice here." Their food was almost completely done now, the only thing standing between them and collapsing on the sofa at home being Dimitri's dessert.

But Dimitri wasn't eating it. He kept fiddling with something under the table. Felix would say it was his phone, except it clearly wasn't; Dimitri never even brought his phone with him on dates.

Dimitri caught his eyes across the table, and that was when Felix realised. Dimitri was smiling, but nervous. There were years worth of love in his eyes, and something close to hope, and he kept fiddling with something in his pocket.

"Felix," Dimitri said. And the box appeared. Small and black, just like the one in Felix's own pocket.

Felix laughed softly. He dug his hand in his own pocket and pulled out the little black box and set it on the table. "Dimitri."

Dimitri's smile was hopelessly wide. His voice cracked with emotion as he spoke. “Felix, would you give me the honour of becoming my husband?”

Felix couldn't help it. He scrubbed furiously at his eyes, blinking tears away, but he couldn't stop them from coming. "Yes," he said, his eyes streaming. He wasn't alone; when he pushed the box across the table, Dimitri's eye definitely filled with tears. "If you'll only do me the honour of being mine as well."

"I wouldn't want anything else."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last up is the epilogue!! Thank you to everyone who's made it all this way


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The promise Dimitri and Felix made comes to pass.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's here holy shit

On the morning of the wedding, Felix woke up separately from Dimitri. Call it superstition, but he was happy to wait.

Dimitri had seen the outfit, of course, but as he put it on, Felix couldn't help but feel almost excited to see his face when they reunited. Shirt, tie, waistcoat - it was a good job the weather wasn't too warm, because with the jacket on top Felix knew he would have roasted in the summer sun.

The wedding venue was a church, not because either of them were particularly into the intricacies of the service but more because Dimitri wanted to. The first time they married, it was in the same church Dimitri's parents got married in - now, it was the one Rodrigue and Felix's mother had. Felix didn't mind; it was a pretty church, and at this time of year the bushes bloomed with flowers.

Felix went in first, taking his time as he walked up the aisle. Even as he smiled, he was nervous, but he was pretty sure that was inevitable. This was a big deal.

On the left hand side of the church, a handful of very familiar faces sat. Ashe, Annette, Mercedes, Dorothea...Leonie had told him she didn't have the time to visit Fhirdiad, but she was there too. They were all there. Even Flayn, who stared up at the ceiling even as he entered. He couldn't deny that he was looking forward to her lecture on church eaves later that evening.

On the right hand side of the church were  _ also  _ a handful of familiar faces. People he'd known for as long as he could remember. People who'd seen him at his worst and, now, he hoped they'd see him at his best. Sylvain sat with his partner, and Ingrid sat alongside them with Dedue just behind. He'd seen a lot of them in the last few months, and he'd see a lot of them for the rest of his life.

The time he spent away from them willingly, hoping that he'd never see them again, felt very far away. In a way, it was.

He didn't stand at the head of the church for long before the doors opened once more. Felix had seen Dimitri's outfit before; they'd discussed it extensively, Dimitri worried that it was the wrong time or place for him to strike out.

But even though he'd seen it before, it didn't make it any less impactful now. Felix felt his cheeks heat as Dimitri approached. He was  _ perfect:  _ his shirt was flawless, somehow without even a crease. But the main thing...Dimitri had nice thighs, and he'd left them open to the air despite the slight wind chill. Instead of matching Felix's suit with one of his own, he wore a skirt, patterned with stars and a constellation Felix couldn’t name.

Felix was pretty sure he'd never felt more gay in his life, but that didn't even go halfway to describing how the sight made him feel.

"You look amazing," Felix said, before Dimitri could even open his mouth when he arrived.

"You took the words right out of my mouth," he replied, his smile blinding. It made something rise in Felix's chest already, and damn it they hadn't even  _ started  _ the service yet. He wasn't meant to be so emotional this early. "You're stunning."

The service was, in all honesty, standard fare. It opened with the priest's welcome, progressed into a declaration of the ceremony's intent, and then went straight into the vows. There was no waffle, no ribbons or bells. Just Felix, Dimitri, and everything that no longer went unsaid between them.

"Felix," Dimitri began. He was already tearing up, and if that didn't say everything about how this was going to go then Felix would be at a loss. "You are the light of my life. It is perhaps cheesy to say it, but I could not be a happier man if you'll let me say it every day of my life. You are kind, intelligent, and endlessly creative. I love you.

"I've known you for a long time, and I would not hesitate to call you my best friend. Since we were children, you've been by my side through thick and thin. Maybe not all the time, but all the times it counted. We haven't always seen eye to eye, in part because you're still a fair bit shorter than me, but we've made it work despite all the height-related and non height-related difficulties.

"I firmly and truly believe that more than even love ties the pair of us together. It gives me nothing but pride to be able to say that I will spend my life with you, and I cannot wait for the-the future that we have waiting for us." Fumbling at his shirt pocket, Dimitri pulled out a large, embroidered handkerchief. Felix recognised Mercedes' handiwork and smiled, taking over.

"I'm going to keep this short," Felix grumbled, "because some people can't save the poetry for the classroom." He looked up at Dimitri and smiled; Dimitri smiled back. "When I was twenty two years old, I stood at an altar not far from here, in front of the same man, and I told him that we'd spent a lot of time together and I couldn't wait to never separate from him again. Needless to say, that didn't quite work out.

"However, there were plenty of things that held true. I said many, many things that still apply: Dimitri is kind and caring, loves without end and without conditions, and makes everyone feel wanted. I told that man at the altar that, no matter what came between us and the things we experienced, we would spend our lives together. And here we are, back together after a divorce and half a decade apart. 

"But this time, I have many new things to say about this incredible man. He's understanding, and a good influence. Back when Dimitri used to pull through sleepless nights without blinking, I couldn't say that, but I can now. I could not be happier that the passage of time, even with the things it has taken away, brought us back together far stronger than the first time."

And damn it, now he was crying too. He could barely keep his eyes open as the priest continued the service, and when Dimitri spoke that soft "I do" Felix sobbed even harder. He could barely force out the echo of those words before Dimitri pulled him close for a kiss.

Their hands stayed joined as they left the church, and once they were outside Dimitri turned to him. "I adore you," he said, his voice so full of  _ everything _ that Felix nearly started crying all over again. When he leaned in for another kiss, Dimitri had other ideas, and with a shout of joy he swung Felix up into the air before bringing him close once more.

Their foreheads touched, just for a moment, before the rest of the crowd streamed out of the church after them. "Forgive me for embarrassing you," Dimitri said, their noses almost touching, "but I didn't think I could contain myself."

"Just kiss me already," Felix said, and Dimitri obliged.

* * *

The reception was pretty much as rowdy as Felix expected it to be, the only break in the noise coming when Sylvain finally stood to deliver his best man speech. "There are lots of jokes in the speech I wrote here," he said. "They all had to be heavily vetted by people who know Felix and his tastes in humour maybe a little better than me - which isn't a bad thing, though maybe I'm the tiniest bit jealous. In the end, I don't think I'm going to make them, but I'll indulge in just the one.

"Lots of things have changed since the last time I spoke at Dimitri and Felix's wedding. Least of all Felix, who looks very, very different to the boy I grew up with. But some things never change, so let me tell you a story from when we were little.

"Felix and Dimitri were glued together when they were kids, way more than the rest of us. When we were little, we once held a mock marriage ceremony for them. It was half a joke and half not, but Felix took it pretty seriously. He told us, over and over - and told Rodrigue too, probably turning most of his hair white - that he'd stick to the vows he made aged four. And here he is, sticking to it.

"We've come a long way. There was a time when I thought I'd never see Felix again, let alone see him happy. The idea that I'd get to see Dimitri and Felix married to the love of their lives again was completely out of the question. I am...privileged to know these two wonderful, fantastic men. Thank you to both of you, but please, I am begging you, don't make me write a best man speech for a third time."

Even as he raised another laugh from everyone sitting around the table, Felix could see the way Sylvain teared up when he returned to sit next to Yuri. He shot him a thumbs up and received finger guns in return. Some things really didn't change, but those were things he was glad about.

Next, Mercedes stood to speak. "The first time I met Felix, I helped him carry cardboard boxes into our house. He was sullen and quiet, and definitely not the kind of person I fancied living with for several years. I'm not convinced he really knew who he was at the time, but that couldn't be further from the truth now.

"Even when Dimitri and Felix weren't talking, Felix thought of him all the time. I've had countless conversations about him with Felix, long before I knew him or ever assumed I would. Felix always spoke of him deeply and frequently, and sometimes it was easy to forget that they weren't still together.

"Either way, it brings me nothing but happiness to see them come together once more and find joy in each other. It's been a long road for everyone involved, but they made it. From here on, I can only wish them the greatest of happiness."

With speeches made and brief farewells spoken, Felix took Dimitri's hand. They left the reception behind, fingers intertwined, straight on their way to a second - and hopefully far more enjoyable - honeymoon. He couldn't tear his eyes away from his husband, and in turn Dimitri's gaze never left him.

But they walked onwards to more than that. They walked, hand in hand, into a future that was far brighter than before.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed, a comment or kudos would mean a lot to me. This fic was an emotional ride from start to finish, and I'm so, so happy that it resonated with other people.  
> I have a twitter over at [samariumwriting](https://twitter.com/samariumwriting) where I talk about my writing a lot, among other things!


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